Portrait Samara Joy

• 1 You Stepped Out Of A Dream 04:35
• 2 Reincarnation Of A Lovebird 06:28
• 3 Autumn Nocturne 03:47
• 4 Peace Of Mind / Dreams Come True 07:06
• 5 A Fool In Love (Is Called A Clown) 04:48
• 6 No More Blues 05:46
• 7 Now And Then (In Remembrance Of…) 06:28
• 8 Day By Day 04:58
• Total Runtime 43:56

Info for Portrait

“I’m still speechless,” says Samara Joy, reflecting on her 2023 Grammy win for “Best New Artist”. When the Bronx-raised jazz vocalist, 24, tries to place herself back in that historic moment today, she feels nothing but gratitude.

At the same time, Joy understood then that she couldn’t let the award define her. She still had a lifetime of music to explore, a tight-knit crew of extraordinary collaborators to guide, and a passion for songwriting to nurture. So Joy did what any committed, eternally curious jazz musician would do: She hit the road. For her and her band, a seemingly endless run of sold-out tour dates became a nightly opportunity to reach new creative heights. “I just got back to work, doing what, in essence, got me the Grammy in the first place,” she says.

Joy’s new Verve Records release, “Portrait”, is the proper follow-up to “Linger Awhile”, her 2022 breakthrough album, and it represents the next phase in her continuing artistic evolution – unbound by expectations. “Portrait“ documents the immersive, seemingly telepathic rapport she’s developed with her touring band, which includes musicians she learned the jazz craft alongside while earning her undergraduate degree; in fact, it wasn’t until college that Joy began to pursue jazz singing. On the strength of that cozy dynamic — on the road, „I’m among friends, which explains personal chemistry that translates to our live performances,” Joy says. The vocalist offers an album that both honors jazz heritage while staking out bold, singular territory. Whatever a rote, singer-with-sidemen record is, „Portrait“ is not.

Joy co-produced „Portrait“ with fellow multiple Grammy winner Brian Lynch, a trumpeter and musical director who has been Eddie Palmieri’s most vital late-career collaborator and was a member of the final lineup of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. The album was tracked in streamlined sessions – just two or three takes of each tune – at one of jazz’s most hallowed sites, Van Gelder Studio. “With this kind of band,” Joy says, “we play very close together on stage,” so the singer and Lynch recreated that vibe in the studio. The band recorded all together in that same fantastic room, feeding off each other’s energy as they would at a fiery live show. “It was the perfect place to capture this sound in its entirety,” Joy says.

Lynch, Joy raves, allowed her and the band to remain “in the driver’s seat, acting as our very supportive co-pilot.” The singer and her co-producer bonded over Abbey Lincoln’s 1961 LP „Straight Ahead“, on which the daring singer becomes brilliantly enmeshed in a band comprising Max Roach, Booker Little, Eric Dolphy, Coleman Hawkins, Julian Priester and other greats. That recording, Joy says, “showed me what my role could be, and opened my ears to what was possible.”

As on that vocal-jazz touchstone, Joy is best heard here as an integral part of an egalitarian octet featuring trumpeter Jason Charos, saxophonists David Mason and Kendric McCallister, trombonist Donavan Austin, pianist Connor Rohrer, bassist Felix Moseholm and drummer Evan Sherman. She soars above and out front, of course, but also functions as a pure instrument and a source of support and interplay. “I’m often the fifth voice,” she says, “the fifth horn. I just love the sound of this band. Hopefully, when people hear it they’ll realize that I’m a musician too.”

Highlighting Joy’s generous, all-for-one strategy as a leader – an influence she gleaned from Art Blakey and Max Roach – “Portrait” boasts a uniquely synergistic approach to arranging. „I enjoy collaborating with fresh musical voices,” Joy says of her band, “because it not only helps all involved grow but helps to expand how musicians and audiences alike hear this music and what’s to come. So I wanted to put these creative minds in one place to expand the music and, as a result, each other.” Joy took the ever-evolving highlights from her concert songbook and gave them to individual band members to arrange, based on each player’s gifts and personality.

„Portrait” is also Joy’s most profound expression yet of her prowess as a songwriter – particularly as a lyricist of absolute poetic precision. It’s an inspired, surprising program that serves as a reminder of how the vocal-jazz repertoire can still break new ground while nodding to jazz history. On “Reincarnation of a Lovebird (Pursuit of a Dream),” Joy weds Charles Mingus’ tender tribute to Charlie Parker to her own mediation on, as she describes it, “love so strong that it’s surreal.” “Peace of Mind/Dreams Come True” matches Joy’s first original song and saxophonist Kendric McCallister, which unpacks the anxieties Joy felt in her post-Grammy moment, with the gratitude and cosmic optimism of Sun Ra. “Now and Then (In Remembrance Of…)” features Joy’s affecting words atop music by the late, great bebop sage Barry Harris, with whom Joy and McCallister studied. “It’s for Barry,” Joy says, “but it’s also for everybody in my life who is no longer here and yet I want to keep thinking of them, keep them present.”

Still, as might be expected given Joy’s track record with classic tunes, some of the albums most impressive moments are the standards: Jason Charos’ arrangements of “You Stepped Out of a Dream” and “No More Blues” (an exuberant palate cleanser on which Joy sings Jon Hendricks’ lyrics); McCallister’s take on “Autumn Nocturne”; David Mason’s “Day by Day.” Donavan Austin’s original “A Fool in Love (Is Called a Clown)” is so delightfully sentimental it might as well be a standard.

Throughout, Joy sounds divine, evoking her jazz idols while tapping into her rich background in a family of gospel and R&B renown. Or as Joy puts it simply, “I’m grateful to have so many tools at my disposal.”

Ultimately, though, „Portrait“ is a masterwork that unspools the story of an ensemble – a band that coalesced as friends and student musicians and has continued developing through jazz stardom. “It’s just everything that I could have ever dreamed of in a band,” Joy says. “I hope we stay together for years to come. I really do.”

Samara Joy, vocals
Jason Charos, trumpet, flugelhorn
David Mason, alto saxophone, flute
Kendric McCallister, tenor saxophone
Donavan Austin, trombone
Conor Rohrer, piano
Felix Moseholm, bass
Evan Sherman, drums

Recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, by Maureen Sickler
Produced by Brian Lynch & Samara Joy

Samara Joy
With a voice as smooth as velvet, SAMARA JOY’s star seems to rise with each performance. Following her winning the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, she is currently recording her debut recording, which will feature Samara backed by the Pasquale Grasso Trio.

Growing up in New York, music was a pervasive presence, due to the inspiration of her paternal grandparents, Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, who led the well-known Philadelphia-based gospel group, The Savettes. Her father toured with the renowned Gospel artist Andrae Crouch, and her home was filled with the sounds of not only her father’s songs and songwriting process, but the inspiration of many Gospel and R&B artists, including Stevie Wonder, Lalah Hathaway, George Duke, Musiq Soulchild, Kim Burrell, Commissioned, and many others.

“Although I didn’t grow up singing in church,” explains Samara, “I constantly heard my family singing inspirational music together, which instilled in me an appreciation for my musical lineage. Through musicals in middle school, I loved exploring the range of my voice and applying the different colors to fit the characters I played. Finally, during high school, I joined the choir at my church, eventually becoming a worship leader, singing three services a week for nearly two years. That was my training.”

Samara’s first exposure to jazz was while attending Fordham High School for the Arts, where she performed regularly with the jazz band, eventually winning Best Vocalist at JALC’s Essentially Ellington competition. However, jazz wasn’t really her focus until the time came to choose a college. Wanting to attend a state school close to home, she picked SUNY Purchase, gaining acceptance into their acclaimed jazz program, with a faculty that includes many jazz masters (including Pasquale Grasso and drummer Kenny Washington, who both appear on her debut recording.)

“My friends were all into jazz and started sharing their favorite recordings with me to check out. The turning point was when I heard both Sarah Vaughan’s version of ‘Lover Man’ and Tadd Dameron’s recordings featuring trumpeter Fats Navarro. I was hooked.”

From this point, she began to pursue her jazz studies with an intense passion, eventually being named the Ella Fitzgerald Scholar and entering and winning the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition.

Although having only recently celebrated her 21st birthday, Samara has already performed in many of the great jazz venues in NYC, including Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, The Blue Note, and Mezzrow, in addition to working with jazz greats such as Christian McBride, Pasquale Grasso, Kirk Lightsey, Cyrus Chestnut, and NEA Jazz Master Dr. Barry Harris.

Samara's self-titled debut recording is slated for release on July 9 through Whirlwind Recordings. It presents her backed by the trio of guitarist Pasquale Grasso, bassist Ari Roland, and drummer Kenny Washington. Within the album's liner notes, veteran writer Will Friedwald comments that Samara Joy is “a fantastic collection of highly original new arrangements, beautifully sung by a rising talent, and a very impressive first album. People are forever using the word 'timeless' as if it were the greatest praise ever, but in a way, Samara’s voice and her music seem to belong to all time, like she’s connected to the entire history of jazz all at once - as if she were existing in every era simultaneously, she sounds both classic and contemporary.”

Winning the Vaughan award was transformational for Joy. “I was suddenly on the jazz radar. It’s still bizarre to think of how fast things have progressed.” Since then, Joy has dug deep to discover her jazz roots, without losing sight of the innate simplicity that makes her sound shine. Her first album announces the arrival of a young artist destined for greatness.

This album contains no booklet.