For generations, 20th-century Black American artists have ventured from home to find new self-expression among Nordic creative communities in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. Here they found “hipper” intellectual spaces for bringing all people together through music. In this spirit, Brooklyn-based vocalist Candice Hoyes releases a unique arrangement of the Swedish traditional song, notably recorded by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra with vocalist Alice Babs, released in 1978.
Hoyes’s version is arranged for soprano and jazz octet by GRAMMY-winner Ted Nash and features lyrics Hoyes wrote reflecting on the pivotal importance of Black ancestral history in 2025. Hoyes remarks, “My single ‘Far Away Star’ is a tribute to Ellington, and it is a tribute to free expression and justice that is as eternal as the North Star.”
Hoyes is a vocalist across genre, medium, and style. In 2024, she made her composer debut at Lincoln Center in the world premiere of Sadah Espii Proctor’s “adrift,” the first augmented reality installation in the Social Sculptures Project, a series of public art exhibitions.
Upcoming debuts in the 2024-25 season include The Kennedy Center, Morgan Library and Museum, Pioneer Works curated by Moor Mother, Blacktronika Festival, Public Records, unerhört! Festival, Harlem Chamber Players, The Shed, and the Center for Performance Research. Hoyes was awarded a 2025 Du Bois Fellowship and has researched music forged by Josephine Baker, Abbey Lincoln, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, and more. Candice is a vocalist for the new Chicago-based large ensemble Rotary Connection 222, music directed by Junius Paul and led by Charlene, Eibur, and Chanté Stepney.
As an organizer, Candice collaborates with the Feminist Press, Well-Read Black Girl, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in Law, Harlem Arts Alliance, Women in Music, and numerous grassroots organizations. She has produced her feminist performance lecture series for Jazz at Lincoln Center and CUNY for three consecutive seasons.
Candice Hoyes has been published by Shondaland, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and spoken and performed at TED HQ. She is an honors graduate of Harvard University where she co-produced the first hip-hop conference, Columbia Law School, and a lecturer at Jazz at Lincoln Center. “Nite Bjuti” (pronounced night beauty) is her 2023 experimental jazz album.
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