A portrait of the artist as a force of nature

Samara Joy's latest album reveals her priorities for her future in jazz

View this email online October 12, 2024 by Ann Powers This week, we’re listening to the latest album by Samara Joy, the Best New Artist Grammy-winning jazz vocalist, and thinking about how the best portraits do more than capture a moment in time. Hello fellow art lovers, When was the last time you were captivated by an artist’s face on an album cover? So many music fans began their emotional education while contemplating close-ups of their idols while the vinyl spun, whether they were choosing which Beatle had the dreamy eyes on A Hard Day’s Night or thinking big thoughts while returning the stare of a grade-school-age Nas on Illmatic. Many of my favorite album covers refuse the direct gaze in favor of something more delicate. Van Morrison avoiding eye contact four different ways on Moondance; Aretha Franklin glancing beyond the frame, a huge smile on her face, on Aretha Now; David Bowie, pink eyeshadow taking over the frame, in the shot for Aladdin Sane — these classic images seem to invite entry into a private world where the artistic process unfolds.  That’s the effect of the oil painting by Dominic Avant that adorns Samara Joy’s latest album, Portrait. Shown in profile against a spring burst of greens and pinks, the jazz queen casts her eyes toward an imaginary shoreline, the look on her face composed but energetic, with a hint of defiance. The slight raise to her eyebrows echoes her shoulders’ backward pull — she’s ready for something. Whatever it is will be on her own terms. I consider this image and think, wherever she’s going, I want to follow. The title of Joy’s fourth Verve release may not be unprecedented, but it is bold. Many albums don’t stand as portraits: They’re loosely structured assemblages of where a musician is at any point of time. A portrait may not be definitive — just ask the form’s classical master of self-portraiture, Rembrandt, who painted nearly 100 of them — but one demands integrity and self-possession from both the subject and whomever creates the work. For singers, an album title invoking portraiture — which, given its nature, is self-portraiture — presents itself as a definitive statement even when it’s clearly a signpost on a still-developing career. This album lives up to the name, showing listeners some very clear things about where Joy stands now, at 24, a panoply of choices before her. My friend and colleague Nate Chinen described it well this week on the New Music Friday podcast when he noted that Joy took a somewhat unexpected path for a young winner of a Best New Artist Grammy. While Grammy-winning predecessors like Norah Jones and Jon Batiste followed their triumphs by stretching beyond their (already eclectic) roots, Joy doubles down on jazz while expanding what the hallowed form can do for her. “I don’t want to be a jukebox of standards,” she recently told Steve Hochman for Spin, explaining why she’s veered away from the precise American Songbook readings on her 2022 album Linger Awhile to include a couple of original compositions and develop her gift for vocalese, especially on her stunningly great version of Charles Mingus’s “Reincarnation of a Lovebird.” Vocalese, as Nate explained to me, is the jazz singer’s art of creating lyrics for a well-known composition that thoroughly capture its sonic particulars. Joy described this to Steve Baltin in Forbes: “I wanted it to flow as if I wasn't singing any words, like it was just that easy. And the story was still as clear.”  Adapting vocalese to her sensibilities as a Gen Z woman who grew up on her mother’s Luther Vandross albums and The Cheetah Girls, Joy refreshes the practice with remarkable warmth. Her lyrics for “Lovebird” blend romantic pop tropes with the sharpness necessary to serve the tune, and land on a profound insight as Joy sings to the object of her desire, Truth be told, I’d rather love you while you’re in my dreams / maybe then you’ll learn to love me. That’s a great line about the power of longing, as fresh as Olivia Rodrigo’s spin on emo or Chappell Roan’s resurrection of glam. Portrait works as a portrait because whether she’s singing a standard like “Autumn Nocturne” or a new composition like her trombonist Donavan Austin’s “A Fool in Love (Is Called a Clown),” Joy keeps revealing her priorities — above all, to inventiveness and collaborative musicianship. She calls the ensemble on this album her “little big band,” and at every turn she challenges her players to rise to her level. In this way, though it’s very different and came at a later point in its maker’s career, Portrait sometimes reminds me of an album that served a similar purpose for a jazz genius: Sarah Vaughan’s self-titled 1955 album with the trumpeter Clifford Brown. When she made it, Vaughan was a star known for inspiring awe; like Joy, she could easily nail vocal leaps and turns that others could barely contemplate.  Sarah Vaughan, however, brought her to a different place, quieter and more introspective. As the vocal jazz expert Will Friedwald notes in his essay on the release, the standards Vaughan and her small ensemble explored have a thematic arc, examining love from courtship through heartache and, finally, satisfaction. What resonates most, though, is Vaughan’s exquisite sensitivity – toward the songs and even more so toward her collaborators. Whether pining in unison with tenor saxophonist Paul Quinichette on the torch song “Jim” or springing forward in joy alongside Brown on “It’s Crazy,” Vaughan found ways to enrich and amplify her own performance through careful listening and response; she was a master player at the top of her game, unrivaled both technically and expressively. I’m not saying Joy hits that high point on Portrait, but the central idea within her performances echoes Vaughan’s on her great work: that the main work of a singer is finding the balance between method and heart, between the urge to dazzle and the need to consider each choice deeply, adding depth to the shine. Joy’s serious face on her album cover reframes the ebullience of her rise: She’s not a jukebox, it reminds us, she is an artist who will take the time to fully absorb the songs and reanimate the cliché of making them her own. Mostly, what I consider as I look at that gorgeous painting and revel in Joy’s voice is the future. A portrait stops time, but those that linger in the mind also vibrate with possibility, suggesting what the person held within it will do when they walk beyond the frame. Those verdant colors all around Samara Joy capture a season giving way to even brighter days.  Newsletter continues after sponsor message More stories from NPR Music Isabella Gomez Sarmiento took on the momentous and painful task of identifying every notable person caught up in the Sean Combs indictment. A useful guide to a horrific unfolding news story.  Tom Huzenga talked to composer Gabriela Ortiz about her childhood in a folk family, the impossible task of defining Mexican music and her fruitful collaborations with conductor Gustavo Dudamel.  Sheldon Pearce writes about the bonding rituals that make up Dunya, the beautiful new album by Mustafa.  Lebanese-American music journalist Danny Hajjar talked to Scott Detrow about how musicians in Beirut and elsewhere are coping in a war zone.  Last week, NPR covered a concert thrown in honor of the classical producer Adam Abeshouse, who was suffering from bile duct cancer. He has now passed. Here’s his obituary.  RIP to the gospel legend and matriarch Cissy Houston.  Here are a few more sights and sound that captivated me this week:  Albums can be portraits, and they also can be landscapes. The violinist and composer Jenny Scheinman’s latest offering, All Species Parade, is an engrossing evocation of California’s Humboldt County and the many creatures who make up its unruly ecosystem. It’s the culmination of several different projects that had her exploring the region’s natural and cultural history, and it’s just prickling with life. And how often do you get to hear three of the best working guitarists — Nels Cline, Bill Frisell and Julian Lage — all on one disc? If you’re into jazz singers, I highly recommend Will Friedwald’s books on the subject – especially 2017’s opinionated, informative and fun The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums. I asked Nate Chinen for his favorite example of vocalese and he pointed me toward this astounding Kurt Elling performance of Wayne Shorter’s “Night Dreamer.” We’re solidly in spooky season and that means there’s a bloodbath of horror on streaming services. My daughter, who has watched 180 horror movies so far this year, ranks The Watchers at the top of her list — it’s on Amazon Prime and Hulu. MaXXXine, Ti West and Mia Goth’s latest retro gorefest, doesn’t come to Max until next week, but you can stream its predecessor Pearl right now. I like my horror psychological and perverse, and that means I love David Cronenberg movies — I think I’ve seen all but two. My Criterion Channel pick this week is its Cronenberg collection, which includes two rarely shown, highly transgressive and odd student films from the body horror master: Crimes of the Future (the one from 1970, not his film of the same title from 2022) and Stereo. Both feature the baroque style and insanely expressive face of Ronald Mlodzik, Crony’s early muse. I had the pleasure of curating a playlist for Ghostly International head Sam Valenti IV’s weekly newsletter Herb Sundays, leaning toward my favorite female voices in celebration of the recent publication of How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History, our first NPR Music book. I’m always down for a trip to the uncanny valley, and am intrigued by Clayton Purdum’s thorough attempt to outline the spot “weird nonfiction” holds within it. I strongly disagree with point 19 in his definition, though. Music offers much that fits into this category — just ask Kool Keith or Bob Dylan. Macoun apples are the best apples this year. Don’t @ me.  NPR Classical How less is actually more for Mahler ... Introducing NPR Music+, a new way to support what you love and explore new music and conversations sponsor-free. NPR Music+ includes two podcasts with one convenient subscription: All Songs Considered and Alt.Latino, both sponsor-free. 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