Samara Joy — Female Vocalist of the Year

By Suzanne Lorge I Nov. 7, 2024

Joy says she has been “listening to melodies that would challenge me to sing in a different way than I would on a standard.”
(Photo: AB+DM)

It’s exciting to watch a megawatt talent unfold in real time. When Samara Joy won the Sarah Vaughan Vocal Competition in 2019, she was still a student who’d only started scatting a couple of years earlier.

Today she’s an ever-touring headliner with a massive online following and two Grammy wins. But the most astonishing thing about her rapid rise in the music world is how her artistry continues to develop right before our eyes.

In an interview with DownBeat in late 2023, Joy put forth a few things she’d like to try next. Top of the list was to work with orchestration; this dream comes to fruition, she says, on Portrait, her October release and third album for Verve. This record — eight tracks of full band arrangements constellated around her rich vocals — promises to solidify her reputation as a front woman of extraordinary power.

“I was inspired by big bands and strings and large ensembles,” she said in a call from the road last September. “But I wanted to have my own compact version of it — a little big band that I could travel with. And even though there are eight musicians on stage, with the way that we play together, dynamically, it sounds as if it’s a larger band than it is. I’m really proud of the music that we’ve recorded over the past year.”

Another of her goals was to continue developing the creative relationships that she’d formed with peers from SUNY-Purchase, her alma mater. Two of these long-time collaborators play on the record: trombonist Donavan Austin, who contributed the original “A Fool In Love (Is Called A Clown),” and tenorist Kendric McCallister, who arranged three tracks: “Reincarnation Of A Lovebird (Pursuit Of A Dream),” “Autumn Nocturne” and “Now And Then (In Remembrance Of).” It is with these instrumentalists in particular that Joy surpassed two other milestones: furthering her skills as a lyricist and stepping out as a songwriter.

Joy has been writing lyrics since her first album, but these were lyrics to known solos, rather than complete texts for an instrumental melody line. She handles this risky task masterfully on Charles Mingus’ rangy, tricky “Reincarnation Of A Lovebird” and Barry Harris’ romantic, mellifluous “Now And Then.”

“I’m glad that I had the practice of writing lyrics to solos to guide me,” Joy said. “I wanted the words to flow and not compete with the melody, because the melody tells a story on its own. It took a lot of time, and it was definitely a process. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t just saying a bunch of gibberish over a beautiful melody, but that it all made sense, that the melody and lyrics were working together to tell the story.”

Joy pushed herself further on this record, including a medley that combines her first tune as a composer (with McCallister), “Peace Of Mind,” and the Sun Ra/Jae Mayo composition “Dreams Come True.” From the blazing, gospel-tinged original she segues easily into the happy swing of the Sun Ra classic — a most promising debut.

These latter tunes also signal a deepening in Samara’s choice of material. Though songbook favorites have been her mainstay to date, the young singer is now looking to incorporate greater complexity into her work.

“I won’t say that I was getting tired of standards, but my ear was opening up,” she said. “I’ve been listening more to jazz compositions, as opposed to jazz standards. Listening to melodies that would challenge me to sing in a different way than I would on a standard.

“Mingus is obviously sophisticated and complex — modern, if you will. And the song that he wrote for Bird has an insane melody that I don’t think I would have even dreamed of singing two years ago. It’s really such a beautiful composition. But I found myself getting inspiration [for this] from my peers, listening to the songs and albums that they listen to. With all of this inspiration around me, I started asking questions, and the music grew as a result.”

This ongoing awakening brings Joy to one of her most ambitious goals: to be a contributing writer to the new American songbook, alongside singers like Jazzmeia Horn and Cécile McLorin Salvant.

“It’s pretty scary, because that’s one thing that I said I wanted to do — to write my own songs eventually,” she said. “I don’t want to rush that process, but I really want to strengthen that muscle. And this song in particular [‘Peace Of Mind’], I wanted it to be an adequate representation of where my musical mind is now. It also was a way for me to get out how I was feeling about all of this success, for lack of a better word. All of this stuff that I wasn’t expecting to happen to me in my life — at least as quickly as it has. It’s been happening all at one time, and I wasn’t sure how to handle becoming an adult and, in the process, how to speak up for myself and communicate with people and make decisions.

“Writing this song helped me to verbalize those overwhelming feelings of deciding which path to go down. And I hope that it’s a perfect first song, one that people can relate to. [At first], I didn’t know how to finish it: I had ended it on, ‘Sometimes you feel like giving up, but don’t ever lose hope, just remember.’ And I was, like, just remember what? So I combined it with the Sun Ra composition ‘Dreams Come True.’ It was a perfect answer to my song — just remembering that so much good has happened, that you just have to keep on going and understand that there is no bad, really, just lessons.” DB