wenty-four-year-old Bronx native Samara Joy sings with a young person’s passion and an experienced artist’s wisdom. “It’s spooky,” the great bassist Christian McBride has said of the musician.“She sounds and tells stories like an elder.” Joy’s refined, distinctive style has been compared to Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald—all legendary singers who also recorded for Verve Records—but the perspective she shares on her Grammy-winning album Linger Awhile is all her own. She puts her spin on well-known standards like “Misty” and “Round Midnight,” but her deep curiosity takes her deeper into jazz history on “Sweet Pumpkin” and the Vaughan gem “Can’t Get Out of This Mood.”

In 2024, she won a third Grammy Award, for her take on the Betty Carter classic “Tight,” and is currently preparing new music for a full-length follow-up. The New York Times praised the “silky-voiced rising star” for “helping jazz take a youthful turn” while NPR’s All Things Considered named her a “classic jazz singer from a new generation.” This is her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut—and she’s only going up from here.