Joy Guidry

Joy Guidry is an American bassoonist and composer.

Early life

Guidry was born in Houston and first became interested in music through her exposure to gospel music at church.

Guidry graduated from the Peabody Institute in 2018 with a bachelor's degree in bassoon performance, after which she participated in a fellowship at the Banff [Centre for Arts and Creativity]. She earned a diploma from Mannes [School of Music] the following year.
In 2021, Guidry was awarded the Berlin Prize for Young Artists for her Radical Self-Love program. Her debut album, Radical Acceptance, was released in February 2022. That year, she served on a panel of curators to select projects from new artists to be recorded on the American Composers Forum innova Recordings label.
Guidry is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in music at University of California, San Diego. After touring with her dissertation project, AMEN, a recording of the work will be released in May 2024.

In 2020, the National Sawdust Ensemble commissioned and premiered Y'all don't wanna listen, a work by Guidry for cello, alto flute, and violin.

A Prayer for Protection, a work for seven double basses, was commissioned by the New World Symphony for 2021–2022 BLUE project bass fellows.

Guidry's "mini-opera" for soprano, double bass, and oboe, This just don't make sense was commissioned by the Long Beach Opera for a virtual performance by the ensemble in November 2020.

Titled after a 1968 quote from activist Fannie Lou Hamer, They Know What They've Done To Us was commissioned by the I&I Foundation and premiered at the 2022 Lucerne Festival, where it was performed by trumpet player Aaron Akugbo and pianist Zeynep Özsuca.

Guidry is Christian and queer. Her 2022 work Radical Acceptance explores her journey with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.