Devonté Hynes: In Conversation - A Kick-off Event

Devonté Hynes: In Conversation An Online Kick-off Event for Devonté Hynes' Spring 2021 Artist Residency at NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music

Monday February 22 2021 @ 9:00 pm ET

Co-sponsored by NYU’s Institute of African American Affairs and the Center for Black Visual Culture

Join us for a special online launch event celebrating Devonté Hynes’s Spring 2021 Artist residency at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. Hynes will talk with Institute Chair Jason King and take questions from Recorded Music students in a freewheeling conversation and Q&A about his artistry, vision and music-making philosophies.

One of the most influential voices in music today, Devonté Hynes is a producer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter and vocalist. Raised in England, Hynes started out as a teenage punk in the UK band Test Icicles before releasing two orchestral acoustic pop records as Lightspeed Champion. In 2011, he released Coastal Grooves, the first of four solo albums under the moniker Blood Orange. His 2016 album, Freetown Sound, was released to critical acclaim, and saw Hynes defined as one of the foremost musical voices of his time, receiving comparisons to the likes of Kendrick Lamar and D’Angelo for his own searing and soothing personal document of life as a black man in America. His 2018 album, Negro Swan, was released to equally rapturous response, exploring elements of black depression and identity. It was followed by a mixtape entitled Angel’s Pulse in 2019. He’s become well-known for his collaborations with artists like Solange Knowles, fka twigs, ASAP Rocky, Puff Daddy, Janet Mock, and many more. He was one of four artists invited to the Kennedy Center to perform alongside Philip Glass. In addition to his production work, he scored the film Palo Alto, directed by Gia Coppola, and has scored the film Queen & Slim, by Lena Waithe and directed by Melina Matsoukas. In 2020, Hynes scored and soundtracked the HBO series We Are Who We Are, directed by Luca Guadagnino (director of Call Me By Your Name).