Samara Joy paused in the wings, the picture of chic composure in a sequined black pantsuit, before the start of her headlining set at the Exit Zero Jazz Festival. Her eight-piece band struck up a fanfare: the prefatory strain of “‘Round Midnight,” by Thelonious Monk. Stepping out, Joy began singing Jon Hendricks’ lyrics to the song: “A pale and lonely moon lights the sky in the dark, before the dawn…” Her presence was regal, her voice resplendent. She seemed every part the star.
This was in mid-May. A few weeks earlier, Joy had made her Carnegie Hall debut to a rapturous sellout crowd. A couple of months before that, she’d won her fourth and fifth Grammy Awards, adding to a cache that includes the prize for Best New Artist. This was the latest phase in the rocket trajectory of Joy’s career, the dimensions of which have scarce precedent in the modern era. But that glow-up is not what Joy chooses to focus on: before I introduced her onstage at Exit Zero, the only instruction I received from her tour manager was to avoid any mention of awards or acclaim.
What Joy prefers to foreground instead is the vibrancy of the jazz tradition, and a lineage stretching from Sarah Vaughan, Abbey Lincoln and Carmen McRae to contemporary greats like Dee Dee Bridgewater and Dianne Reeves. This is apparent in a choice of material that includes not only Monk but also Mingus — as in Charles, whose “Reincarnation of a Lovebird” she has furnished with her own lyrics. It’s also apparent in her exuberant give-and-take with the band, a cadre of youthful peers like tenor saxophonist Kendric McCallister and trumpeter Jason Charos.
Joy featured a version of this group on her most recent album, Portrait, which marked an artistic breakthrough. She’ll enlist the same band for An Evening with Samara Joy at the Miller Theater on Nov. 11, her 26th birthday. Judging by the results not only at Exit Zero but also bigger stages like the Philharmonie de Paris, this concert will showcase Joy’s voice like a gem on a velvet cushion — but it will also rightly present her as a sparkplug, eager to throw down with a brightly swinging band.
This doubling-down on her convictions as a jazz artist was no accident, and it only came as a result of some stubborn insistence. “Nobody expected it to pan out this way,” Joy tells WRTI. “I certainly didn’t, as far as the recognition and the awards are concerned. And I think because of that, the excitement kind of turned into projection. Like: ‘This is what you should do now in order to capitalize off of all of this.’ And I had to make a decision: Am I going to sacrifice my integrity to capitalize on a moment? Or am I going to strive for something greater, and continue to do what I feel like got me to that point, which was just being genuine?”
She pauses thoughtfully, and adds: “It’s crazy to have to make that sort of decision in your early twenties. I’m not the first, I certainly won’t be the last. But it was crazy for me to learn how to trust myself. And protect my time and space, and protect my name, and protect the artistry and the integrity that I want to be associated with. So I’m very proud now, to be on the other side of what the past couple of years have taught me, and being able to genuinely perform at a festival or in a theater and say: ‘This is my authentic, genuine expression of what I'm listening to, who I am.’ And I never want to lose that, and I never want to stop growing — and taking the time that it takes to grow.”
Growth has been the hallmark of Joy’s path as a musician, of course. Singing is her birthright, as WRTI has explored — but it was through her time in the Jazz Studies program at Purchase College that she found her true calling, working with mentors like Jon Faddis and Alexis Cole. Around this time, she also came into the orbit of bebop piano master Barry Harris. “He never lost sight of what he was doing it for,” she reflects. “It’s about having something you believe in so strongly that you’re willing to dedicate your whole life in the pursuit of it, and the pursuit of sharing it with other people.”
Pointedly, Joy has evolved as a jazz artist not only by seeking out her elders but also ensconcing herself in a peer group: band mates like drummer Evan Sherman, who has been a young torchbearer for the swinging mainstream, and pianist Tyler Bullock, who this week was announced as a winner of the Gilmore’s new Larry J. Bell Young Artist Award. “The musicians that are in the band right now, they’ve shown me so much about what I could do,” Joy attests. “The possibilities of having a band like this, it’s not just melody, solos and out; I can be an integral part of the music that’s happening. I can expand my range and my musical mind. For instance, I wasn’t listening to Charles Mingus or Booker Little or Max Roach before. And now that I am, I have a different perspective, a way of expressing myself. It’s another added layer.”
As Max Roach would say, there are words, and there are deeds. A couple of days before Joy and I talked for this story, she played two sets at Mezzrow, a Greenwich Village listening room where the capacity tops out around 60. (A day or two after we talked, she popped up at Close Up NYC, a new Tribeca club that seats only 35.) “It was so much fun,” Joy said of the Mezzrow hit. “Especially because I like taking the opportunity to bring in new material.” When a few people told her that they never expected to see her in such a small room, she said her response was: “Why not? You know, I’m not a pop star.”
Whatever you make of such demurrals, it continues to be a thrill to watch Joy navigate her success. And it will surely be a special evening when she celebrates her birthday on the Miller Theater stage. “Portrait is more than an album,” she says. “It's a statement, and I look forward to making that statement in a city that means a lot to me and to my family — and being able to be vulnerable and share not only an album, but a concept and a direction.”
An Evening with Samara Joy takes place at the Miller Theater on Nov. 2.
