Kenyon Adams (K7N)
K7N (he/they) is a multi-hyphenate artist, inspirational singer, and artistic director. Through ritual arts practices, he seeks to reclaim or expand embodied ways of knowing, towards imagining and constructing sustainable futures. His forthcoming book Joywerk: Meditations for Walking in Power, reflects over a decade of study and reflection on the nature of joy rooted in daily engagement with 20th Century American mystic and theologian, Howard Thurman.
K7N’s ritual trilogy, WATCHNIGHT: WE ARE ALMOST TO OUR DESTINATION, includes the performance work, PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE, which invites audiences to sit, kneel, and chant Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. The second work in the trilogy, entitled C7M7N (COMMUNION), a ritual of nourishment and commemoration, premiered at the Fisher Center in 2023. K7N served as Artist in Residence at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music for the 2015-16 academic year and has been a Distinguished Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center. In 2023, he was named Artist in Residence at the University of Texas Austin (TX Performing Arts) where he developed, COMPLINE NOIR, the final work in the WATCHNIGHT trilogy.
As a producing Artistic Director, K7N has worked with artists including Carrie Mae Weems, Meredith Monk, Alyson Shotz, Aloe Blacc, Bill T. Jones, Camille A. Brown, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, Lee Isaac Chung, Julianne Swartz, Silas Farley, Andrea Miller, Nicole Sealey, and Ilya Kaminsky. In 2021, he was honored to serve on the Advisory Council for artist Carrie Mae Weems’ Land of Broken Dreams: A Gathering, at the Park Avenue Armory.
K7N has contributed art and thought leadership to Live Ideas (New York Live Arts), Fusebox Festival, Open Society University Network, the Fisher Center at Bard College, Yale School of Drama, the Alpine Fellowship, the Langston Hughes Project, Armstrong NOW (Louis Armstrong House Museum), YoungARTS, National Arts Policy Roundtable, the Watermill Center, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
K7N studied Religion & Literature at Yale Divinity School, and Theology of Contemporary Performance at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He holds a BFA from Southern Methodist University, and an MAR from Yale University. K7N has performed nationally as a vocalist, songwriter, and blues harmonica player, making his feature film debut as Jason in Golden Globe Award-winning director Lee Isaac Chung’s narrative feature Lucky Life, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and Moscow International Film Festival.
