Judy Collins has inspired audiences with sublime vocals, boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism. In the 1960s, she evoked both the idealism and steely determination of a generation united against social and environmental injustices. Five decades later, her luminescent presence shines brightly as new generations bask in the glow of her iconic 55-album body of work, and heed inspiration from her spiritual discipline to thrive in the music industry for half a century. Collins is the 2019 recipient of the Joe's Pub Vanguard Award & Residency.

Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most renowned and daring creative pioneers. She is best known for her multimedia presentations and innovative use of technology.  As writer, director, visual artist, and vocalist, she has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater, and experimental music. Anderson has published seven books and her visual work has been presented in major museums around the world. She is the 2020 recipient of the Joe's Pub Vanguard Award & Residency.

Grammy Award-nominated funk, art rock and new wave pioneer Nona Hendryx was the inaugural recipient of the Joe’s Pub Vanguard Residency. Joe’s Pub honored her career as a performer, producer, writer, curator, innovator and mentor, with a year of monthly programming in 2018.  From January through December, Hendryx curated and/or performed in shows that featured not only her body of work, but those of the many multidisciplinary artists who she has influenced (and who continue to influence her).

2013 | Claw-hammer banjo player, composer and singer Abigail Washburn premiered Post-American Girl, a theatrical event exploring US-China relations through the lens of folk music.

2012 | One of America’s greatest musical treasures, Allen Toussaint presented A Southern Night featuring songs from the album as well as songs that relate to the Toussaint Family.

2012 | Angelique Kidjo and director Jo Bonney revisited the legends and tales of Angelique’s childhood, with a poignant perspective on the history of her native country.

2019 | Bronx native Alynda Segarra spreads a new kind of roots-conscious folk music across the country from her adopted hometown of New Orleans, often with her band Hurray for the Riff Raff.

2013 | Rock Bottom was written by Bridget Everett with Tony-winning writing duo Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys.

2015 | Daniel Alexander Jones developed Black Light, an evening-length performance for Jones’s musician persona Jomama Jones. Black Light featured music composed by Jones with Bobby Halvorson, and arranged for performance with musical direction by Samora Pinderhughes.

2014 | Daniel Breaker has been seen on Broadway, in film, and on TV. He brings a soulful mix of tunes from all around the musical spectrum, and offers up refreshing new twists on classic soul, R&B, rock and more.

2014 | Dawn Landes (music and lyrics) and director Daniel Goldstein (book) created a musical called ROW – the heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting story of Tori Murden McClure, the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

2017 | Erin Markey's Little Surfer is a Beach Boys/Spice Girls-inspired energy concert written and created by Markey with music by Markey and Emily Bate.

2012 | In No Place to go, Ethan Lipton & his Orchestra an irreverent song cycle about the demise of a local workplace and the diminishing returns of the American dream. 

2019 | Helga Davis' Cassandra was inspired by the Greek myth of cursed seer Cassandra. A semi-autobiographical work that merged Davis’s own experience of otherness in contemporary America with the iconic myth, this raw work crashed classical legend into the 21st century to weave a prescient and fiery account of our culture’s possible demise.

2015 | Jamie Leonhart’s Estuary: an artist/mother story, made in collaboration with critically acclaimed director Joanna Settle, is a musical exploration of the challenges and unanticipated realities of being an artist and a new parent.

2018 | Jean Grae's Jenius is a deep dive into the multi-hyphenate's many lives, talents, and propensity for complete public vulnerability. It explores the importance of claiming your life's credits, the beauty of self-challenge, the exhaustion of explaining who/what you are and why you won't be stopped, and the importance of standing all the way up.

2015 | Joey Arias and playwright and director José Manuel López Velarde, of Mexico City’s innovative theater La Teatreria, developed a children’s musical called A, B… Z. This work explored the fluidity of humanity, the space between light and darkness, and the limitlessness of an open mind.

2015 | Mx Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman returned as their iconic characters Kiki and Herb – the “perverse” and “transcendental” (The New York Times) septuagenarian, lounge-singing duo. The pair debuted Seeking Asylum!, a fully-formed show with new music, current events and aged favorites.

2014 | In Bone Hill, Martha Redbone explored her Appalachian mining family's heritage and history in an epic piece that spans generations and a breadth of music genres. Redbone called on her Native American and African American roots to tell this unexpected family story that unveils a shadowy part of American history through breathtaking original music, humor and layers of dramatic revelation.

2018 | Renowned as a comic host around the world, Murray Hill: About to Break is a departure. It put Hill center stage in the first major dedicated solo show of his long, storied career. Musical direction is by Paul Leschen with original music by Hill with Scott Wittman, Marc Shaiman, Kyle Forrester, Eric Kornfeld, Jesse Elder, and Leschen.

2013 | Noche Flamenca’s adaptation of the Sophocles classic Antigone (Antigona in Spanish) honors the Greek tradition of sung poetry and musical accompaniment. The score was created by Salva de María, Eugenio Iglesias, David ‘Chupete’ Rodriguez, Hamed Traore, and Martín Santangelo using both traditional flamenco styles, new compositions, and the poetry of Sophocles.

2018 | Refrigerated Dreams is a multimedia installation and concert inspired by Carrie Weems’s seminal The Kitchen Table Series. It was directed by Niegel Smith and featured choreography and performances by Francesca Harper, Josh Johnson and The Francesca Harper Project, with original music by Nona Hendryx.

2012 | Rizo with director Niegel Smith: Ordained. Rizo was ordained by the Temple of Glitter. Aggressively feminine and possessing a distinct absence of inhibition, she led a night praising the power of song, giggles, madness and glamorous glances in this collaboration with director Niegel Smith.

2020 | Venus Smiles Not in the House of Tears is a transformative concert event and intimate, radical experiment in multi-genre storytelling, written and produced by Samora Pinderhughes and Jack DeBoe.

2016 | Dreaming Zenzile, a jazz opera based on the extraordinary life of the late South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, conceived, written and performed by East African vocalist and songwriter Somi, and directed by Liesl Tommy.

2012 | Lines was a collaboration conceived by singer, musician, and composer Toshi Reagon in development with playwright Winter Miller, and director Lear deBesonnet. 

2019 | Traveling via intergalactic-astro-disco-space-punk velocity to deconstruct your mentality to a higher vibrational frequency, neo-afrofuturistic psychedelic surrealistic hippies, The Illustrious Blacks, invite you to Planet Ocsid to rejoice in their union…A Union Of Kings.