Jazz / Samara Joy, The Playhouse, March 20. Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS. 

She is just 25 years of age, four years out of college, and already with five Grammy Awards to her name, Samara Joy has the jazz world at her feet. 

Compared to the likes of Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughn and Betty Carter, Samara Joy pays tribute to all those great singers, and while she claims to be still a student, she is already her own original, who will no doubt inspire generations of singers as did those predecessors 

The possessor of a warm, silky, crystalline voice, perfect pitch and an engaging personality, Joy lived up to her name and reputation, as she thrilled her audience with a stunning program of re-imagined jazz standards and original songs.

Her accompanying band consisted of seven virtuoso jazz musicians in Connor Rohrer (piano), David Mason (alto sax/flute), Kendrick McCallister (tenor Sax), Jason Charos (trumpet), Donavan Austin (trombone), Evan Sherman (drums) and Paul Sikivie (bass), who appeared to breathe with Joy as she fascinated her audiences with her own virtuosic vocal stylings embedded in meticulously wrought musical arrangements contributed by band members. 

Beginning her program with a spiritual, Joy followed with Duke Ellington’s Come Sunday in an arrangement by her trombonist before moving on to Sam Coslow’s Beware My Heart. 

Immediately striking was the attention she gave to ensuring that the intention of the lyrics remained clear though clever phrasing and diction, even during her most complex stylings. 

Joy introduced each of her songs with an engaging anecdote, generously standing aside to admire with the audience the superb instrumental solos inherent in the musical arrangements. 

Re-imaginings of familiar standards such as Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar’s Three Little Words, Nacio Herb Brown and Gus Kahn’s You Stepped Out of A Dream and Carmen McRae’s Little Things Mean A Lot were sprinkled through the program, as well as Joy’s own composition Now and Then written with Barry Harris, and Thelonious Monk’s Don’t Worry Now.

But it was a particularly arresting arrangement of a song, Left Alone, written by Billie Holiday but never recorded by her, and stunningly rendered by Joy and her musicians, that will remain the most memorable highlight for this reviewer, of a concert in which every offering was a revelation of the extraordinary poise and musicianship that has already won this artist such acclaim.