Samara Joy in Berlin
The 23-year-old Grammy laureate brought more to the cold and grey city than just Fröhlichkeit
“I can’t believe it’s been only two years since I graduated college”, Samara Joy declares, after already having wowed the audience in the intro to her one-night only concert in Berlin at the Pierre Boulez Saal on November 8th. Thanks to an incentive for young people to attend music events—the Saal offers a 15 Euro ticket for persons under 35 years old—I was able to sit a mere two meters away from the legend in the making. Needless to say, I was already sobbing from Joy’s first sung melodies, and her “do no wrong” New Yorker sense of humor brought more smiles to my face than I can remember whilst being at a live concert.
Samara Joy’s voice soars, either while singing a Tom Jobim standard in near-perfect Brazilian Portuguese (1958’s Bossa Nova tune “Chega de Saudade”), or when she proves that she does not even need a microphone, when Joy and the band asked the sound system to be cut, in order to delight themselves and the audience amidst Pierre Boulez Saal’s amazing acoustics via a breathtaking rendition of “Stardust” (Hoagy Carmichael/Mitchell Parish), a song she had released as part of her 2021 album. In fact, the Gen Z jazz icon seems to draw inspiration from greats of older generations such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday, as it is obvious to any singer and musician, like yours truly, whilst listening to Samara’s powerful voice, that she has mastered both classical and popular singing techniques and styles.
But it is throughout her concert that Samara demonstrates why, albeit unexpected to her, she was the recipient of the 2023 Grammy Award for Best New Artist. One might forget to be listening to such a young artist, because the musical quality of her work sounds like that of a veteran jazz vocalist of yesteryear. When it comes to Samara Joy, age really does seem to be just a number, since her debut album at Verve Records, the stunning Linger Awhile (2022) already had won the Grammy in 2022 for Best Jazz Vocal Album. “Born and raised in the Bronx, NY” and “I’m so grateful” are some of the statements that this jazz diva has been making in her acceptance speeches, and it was not any different last night at the Pierre Boulez Saal.
The trajectory of a young woman that honed her talent at the prestigious Conservatory of Music at SUNY Purchase is demonstrated through Joy’s appreciation not only for her craft, but also for her fellow musicians. As she steps back, out of the spotlight, when her fantastic band of Luther Allison (Piano), Michael Migliore (Double Bass) and Evan Sherman (Drums) improvise, one can watch Joy grooving to the fascinating rhythm of live jazz music, without the need to attract attention to herself. Something that added to the beauty of this ever-inspiring art form (dubbed by some as the “music of resistance”) last evening was the concert hall’s initial announcement banning smartphone video recording and picture taking during the performance—a restriction that perhaps for Samara Joy’s Gen Z counterparts at concerts of other musical genres might be extremely difficult to endure.
To me it was very interesting to witness Samara Joy’s pure, raw talent without the mediation of live recording for TikTok and Instagram, especially because the music industry and mass media have been hailing Icelandic jazz pop sensation Laufey (pronounced lay-vay) as Jazz’s savior from being a so-called “dying musical genre” through her penchant as “the Taylor Swift of Jazz”. This has been dissected and questioned by musicians galore, especially by jazz creatives with a huge platform on YouTube such as Adam Neely, who recently posted the video “Is Laufey jazz?”, in order to question some of the industry’s formal and practical misconceptions on what jazz music truly represents.
As the 2019 winner of the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, which helped launch her career, Samara Joy bears resemblance with the late jazz vocalist not just in how they both expand a velvety mezzo-soprano timbre into powerful soprano notes, but also as in how they both delve deep into sultry chest voice sounds. Joy plays with this impressive range through standards such as Thelonious Monk’s 1943 composition “‘Round Midnight”, and she gets to show her “showwomanship” as she engages the audience in a trio of love songs, from finding love, to being single, into finding about a partner’s infidelity: “Nostalgia (The Day I Knew)” by US American jazz trumpet Fats Navarro (1923–1950) with original lyrics by Samara Joy, Betty Carter’s 1976 “Tight”, and Nancy Wilson’s “Guess Who I Saw Today” (Murray Grand/Elisse Boyd).
As I waited for the concert to start, I listened to some of Samara Joy’s hits on Spotify, but that was not enough to prepare me for the beauty and power I was about to witness.
It was even a bit funny to watch Samara Joy talk about her experience in the Grammys, as she recounted—in the opening for her last song of the night before the encores—how it felt surreal to be surrounded at the 2023 ceremony by celebrities she had once watched in a seemingly distant world on the screen. Perhaps Joy might not know that yet, but who she is becoming as an artist is already far into in the stature of celebrity, bigger than the confines of a simile such as “star”. This shows especially when the audience successfully got not just one, but two encore songs from the singer: the first being her 2022 hit “Can’t Get Out Of This Mood” from Linger Awhile, and the last, a perfect vocalese love letter to Berlin.
I seriously cannot wait to witness all that Samara Joy will be bringing to life musically in this world. Whether it be by performing next to her former professor, Italian-born jazz guitarist based in New York City, Pasquale Grasso, or by gracing one of the many talk shows she has been performing live at for the past few years, come rain or come shine, one thing is certain: Samara Joy will linger awhile!
P.S.: Oh, and if you’ve been living under a rock, and have never listened to Samara Joy’s own take on Adele’s “Someone Like You”, then you’re in for the treat of a lifetime! She has also just released her very own holiday album: A Joyful Holiday.
Photo credit: © Samara Joy / Pierre Boulez Saal