Phillip Laurent is a Haitian-American artist living and working in San Francisco. He works in multiple disciplines including music composition and improvisation, visual art, and dramaturgy. Laurent embraces art making as a forum for experimentation and cultural negotiation: a mediation between identity as expressed by oneself and that which is observed by others.

Weaving disparate studies into the expressive palate has been yet another negotiation present throughout Laurent’s trajectory. A graduate of Kenyon College, Laurent earned degrees in Studio Art and Political Science while continuing to study music (piano) and theatre (comedy writing). He has spent his adult life as an educator and artist, serving as the director of the Theatre in Education Program at San Francisco’s Young Performers Theatre between 2013 and 2020, and as cofounder of Hilarious Youth, a performing arts media program he operated from 2018 to 2023.

“Teaching theatre for so long, I was always encouraging my students to think of the relationships between their characters as the actual heroes of each story, then it clicked: Most of my music until that point had been a solo endeavor! So I made a point of supporting as many of my peers as I could as a collaborator and performer. What an eye opener!”

Since 2020, Laurent has collaborated and performed with artists including Adrienne Swan, Zekarias Musele Thompson, Benjamin Rodgers, Micah Morris, Miles Lassi, Laura Cohen, Zachary James Watkins, Brontez Purnell, Marielle V Jakobsons, and Laraaji.

Laurent has presented work in Bay Area cultural institutions such as BAMPFA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Lab SF, SFJAZZ, MoAD, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, CNMAT Berkeley, and Eternal Now (Oakland). He has also performed work in numerous DIY arts organizations including Grand Opening and Beauty Supply Arts.

During 2024 - 2025, Laurent was invited to participate in the New Voices IV Residency facilitated by legendary spatialized sound theater Audium SF. Here he created and debuted his piece Remote Viewing, a composition for Organ, Saxophone, Woodwinds, and Cello. In October 2025, Laurent and collaborator Micah Morris were awarded a Zoolabs Fund grant for their synthesizer and voice project Psychic Charisma.