When jazz singer of the moment Samara Joy appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 2022, she took to the smaller outdoor stage, in a time slot before the masses had arrived. All in her presence were wowed. When Joy returned to the festival in September, she had leapt meteorically to the main arena stage, with thousands of adoring fans already hip to her rising-star status. Aside from her remarkable musical presence, Joy’s stage-side manner felt more assured and even lived in — especially for a 24-year-old artist.
What a difference a year made.
Joy had already been garnering lavish praise from the jazz scene and beyond for her powerful but also artful way with jazz in the old-school, traditional sense. Joy’s power and supple phrasing conjures up echoes of jazz chanteuse legends Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as firebrands like Betty Carter (whose song “Tight” became the basis of Joy’s recent Grammy nomination). Modern touches also figure into Joy’s blend. Then came a surprise on Grammy night last February, when she became the rare jazz artist to win the Best New Artist Grammy — on top of Best Vocal Jazz Album — instantly propelling her into a new and wider echelon of public visibility.
Thus, when Joy makes her Santa Barbara debut, in the UCSB Arts & Lectures series, it won’t be in Campbell Hall, but in the big house of The Granada Theatre, on Friday, December 8. For this occasion, we’ll be catching Joy in holiday mode, joined by her family for a program called A Joyful Holiday. As an added party-time treat, there will be a free pre-concert “Holiday Sing-in” by the SBCC Choral Program, led by Nathan Kreitzer (of Quire of Voyces fame).
Joy, born Samara Joy McLendon in the Castle Hill area of the Bronx, was steeped in music in her household, with a father who sang with gospel legend Andraé Crouch and an environment coated with gospel and soul music. Surprisingly, although she won the Best Vocalist award at the Essentially Ellington Festival at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Joy didn’t delve fully into jazz until going to college at SUNY Purchase. Fittingly, she will be joined by members of the McLendon family for A Joyful Holiday, also timed with the release of an EP on the Verve label.
Another Joy-related festival story: She performed in the vintage Teatro Morlacchi in Perugia, Italy, as part of last July’s 50th anniversary Umbria Jazz Festival, where she had performed a year earlier in a smaller venue. As part of the concert, Joy premiered her exhilarating new vocal arrangement and lyric for Charles Mingus’s classic Reincarnation of a Lovebird, which she remembered starting to work on in the festival’s hotel in Perugia a year earlier.
“I feel like this is my second home,” she told the Umbria festival crowd, beaming. She’s busy collecting second homes around the world. Next stop, Santa Barbara? What goes around has come around with uncommon and well-deserved speed and force for this prodigious songbird. And it’s a saga very much still unfolding.
Samara Joy, A Joyful Holiday is Friday, December 8, 8 p.m., at The Granada Theatre (1214 State St.). See artsandlectures.ucsb.edu.