In collaboration with the Brooklyn Public Library, FourOneOne presents Black Poems, the quintet led by vocalist, composer and educator Fay Victor. Drawing from writers who have served as deep inspirations for Victor throughout her life—Nikki Giovanni, Ntozake Shange, Thulani Davis, Sonya Sanchez, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde and Jayne Cortez—Black Poems uses eight of their poems as source material for a tapestry-based score and suite. Victor will be joined by poet and vocalist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, pianist Angelica Sanchez, drummer Lesley Mok, and bassist and fellow singer Devon Gates for the first Black Poems performance since 2022. Join us for an inspired interweaving of the Black music and literary traditions, performed by both burgeoning and established forces within New York’s creative music community.

Over the past 25 years, vocalist, composer and educator Fay Victor has expanded the terrain of America’s Black vocal tradition through a kaleidoscopic career—enveloping her musical upbringings in Brooklyn, Trinidad and Tobago, and Amsterdam’s vibrant “New Dutch Swing” scene of the 1990s. Her singular “everything is everything” approach—from speech to scat, song to call-to-action and interrogations into who gets to make “new music compositions”—has won her a devoted audience over a dozen albums as bandleader. Victor is an electrifying live performer, whose voice can turn from crystalline to gritty within the same breadth. Cecil Taylor was once moved to approach her after a set and exclaim, “Betty Carter would have SHOT you!” From November 2026 through January 2027, her residency with FourOneOne foregrounds the creative histories central to her practice, with the help of collaborators and friends including Terry Jenoure, Lyndon Achee, Jessie Cox, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Devon Gates, Angelica Sanchez, Lesley Mok, and more. 

Victor spent her school years in Brooklyn and Long Island and enjoyed summers visiting family in Trinidad and Tobago. The music of her upbringing embodies the paths of relocation so common for many Black American and West Indian peoples: calypso and reggae, Motown and Philly Sound, alongside European and Indian classical traditions. But it was jazz that beckoned to her when she began taking music “seriously” during her young adulthood. In her words, “it was a place to find your own voice.” 

New York City wasn’t the right place to develop that voice. “I had to eat, first off, and secondly it was just so competitive. So I wanted to go somewhere else and figure it out.” She found a welcoming and lively creative community in Amsterdam, where she lived from 1996 to 2003, and a mentor and personal hero in pianist Misha Mengelberg–-“The first musician I encountered that didn’t feel limited by any idea.” In this atmosphere of support and experimentation, she developed her “free song” approach of moving fluidly between written and improvised material, and established creative bonds that continue to inform her work today. She later performed with Mengelberg’s Instant Composer Pool, Han Bennink and other luminaries of the Dutch scene.

Fay Victor returned to New York City in October 2003 with a daring voice and vision rooted in the multi-faceted communities and experiences of her personal voyage. From complementing the unsung melodies of Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk with original lyrics; to developing a body of compositions that complicate the assumptions of the European classical tradition; leading her own ensemble centered on the steelpan, the national instrument of Trinidad and  Tobago; and much more, Victor’s ongoing career is a testament to the elasticity of America’s Black music tradition. 

FourOneOne's programs are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

FourOneOne was supported by New Music USA’s Organization Fund in 2026–2027.