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BR: What was growing up like for you, and what drew you to Jazz?

Samara Joy: Growing up, I like to say I had a really simple but vibrant childhood. I grew up in a house with eight people: my parents, my uncle, my cousin, my brothers, my grandma. And surprisingly, we all sort of got along. There was never any “Hey, you’re in the bathroom too long” or that kind of thing. It was just a great childhood. I think being around a lot of elders, like my grandma and my uncle and my parents, as well as being around my brothers, might have aided in that relationship to them, being close to them all the time. And obviously we shared a lot of things, like dinner, like movie nights, but also music. The house that I grew up in, my mom actually grew up in as well. And so she was always talking about the music that she was listening to and how this room used to be her room, where she would put all of her vinyl and where she got Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall for the first time and was listening to it on her record player. The concerts she would go to see when she was in college. And my dad as well is a musician. So I think that’s where I was exposed to, or at least realized that I love music, was because I was exposed to their love of it. And so I just wanted to listen to everything that they were listening to when they were younger, which is what we did together at the house and to and from school. Jazz came about a lot later. I think in hindsight, there were definitely artists that I listened to that were jazz-adjacent or influenced in some way, but it never was straight-on, quote unquote, tradition, the way the stuff that I listen to and am inspired by now is. Until I got to high school, and even then I wasn’t so immersed in it, but I was introduced to it, so that by the time I was auditioning for colleges, I was like, “Oh, I know one or two jazz songs. I think I can at least audition to see what happens.” And I got into one school, and that’s where the whole journey started. But growing up and being exposed to a passion for music, I think maybe aided in that.

Can you describe some moments that you’ll never forget from your April 2026 live shows at the Blue Note Los Angeles?

Samara Joy: Well, I think the energy of playing in a club, especially one that just opened. They said they hadn’t had so many singers in there. So it was a lot of firsts surrounding that. It was the first show back in Los Angeles in about a year or so, two years maybe. So I think the energy and the intimacy is what I won’t forget. And also the opportunity to play multiple shows, as opposed to just being here for one night and leaving and having that one great night, but also just having four sets in total. We played two nights, four sets of music, and I could just feel the energy building with each set from the band. And it was met equally by the energy of the audience. A lot of special guests came by as well. Lianne La Havas came, Corey Henry came, and it was great to see musicians in the audience as well.

Live at the Blue Note L.A. marks your first-ever live release. What made this particular run of performances feel like the right moment to capture and share a live project with your audience?

Samara Joy: It felt like the right moment because we’ve just been working on it for so long. It doesn’t feel that long because it’s only been maybe three years, but it seems like my band and I have gone through several metamorphoses of how we play together, how we play certain songs together, and how we interact on stage. And because that development was so fast, sometimes it’s like, “Oh, this show was the great show. This was the best show that we played up until this point.” And then a couple of months down the line, we changed the way that we do things because we’re just playing together so often. And then that becomes the best show that we’ve done up until that point. And so for a while, I was scared to record because I feel like this is not going to be the best that we’ve ever done up until this point. It’s still ahead of us, which is a great thing. But this project, it just felt like one that was particularly strong among all of the performances that we’ve done, good and bad. It felt like one of the highlight performances from the band and me, and so I felt comfortable enough to share it, even if it is a small snippet.

How did that experience challenge you?

Samara Joy: Any performance challenges me, but particularly in small clubs. I feel like there’s a certain level of banter and connection with the audience that I’m always a little hesitant to do, or apprehensive of, just because I’m like, “Oh my gosh, what if I tell a joke or I do something and it’s not funny and it doesn’t land?” And it’s like, “Ooh, awkward.” And I also think that’s the beauty in it, you know? You try something, it doesn’t work. You try something again. And maybe being in close quarters, in proximity to your audience, to your listeners in that way, is a good exercise in that and in continuing to develop that relationship. It’s always a little nerve-wracking, but I feel like it challenged me to just be more confident. You know, saying, “These are people. They came to see a show. I want to give them the best that I have and communicate and let them know that the relationship is still strong.”

How do you prepare for a live performance?

Samara Joy: Well, I perform live a lot, and I tour a lot. So the preparation maybe happens before the tour starts, as opposed to right before the show. Before the tour starts, there are rehearsals. There are new songs, new repertoire, new arrangements that we run. There’s also a routine where I listen back to shows that we’ve done on the last tour. We’ve had a break in between. I look at the set list, and I’m like, “I don’t really like the way we open the show. I want to try to find something else.” And that doesn’t always mean a new opener. Sometimes that means looking at a song we already have and shaping it so that it feels like an opener, as opposed to maybe the fifth song in the set or the seventh song. So, live performance, because I don’t do a lot of the same songs and I like to switch it up quite often, the set list is really important to me. Ninety minutes on stage is maybe a long time for anybody to sit down and be engaged with a show. So I want to make sure that it’s interesting, because there are new songs and because they haven’t been recorded yet, but also making sure that they’re songs that I enjoy and hopefully the audience will enjoy and find something to relate to as well.

You have an incredible voice. How do you take care of it? What’s your routine?

Samara Joy: Oh, I should drink more water. I don’t drink enough water. One goal of mine is to drink more water, more water with lemon in it and lime and stuff for all the health benefits. But what I actually do is mainly a lot of classical voice exercises. I draw a lot of inspiration from that material and from the different ways that opera singers use their voice to express different emotions in a song. So I find that even the exercises that are supposed to be warm-ups still sound musical, and you can still shape it. Even though it is a scale, even though it’s rudimentary and something that is going to help my technique, how do I still make it sound like I’m singing a song, so that by the time I do sing a song and I have an idea that might be particularly difficult, I’ve already put the work in to make sure that my voice can meet that idea? Which is the hardest part. I think there is another part of preparation and taking care of your voice that is mental. And that is: how much music are you listening to? How many ideas do you have? Are you exercising that creativity, so that not only are you exercising your voice and doing warm-ups to maintain that, but the ideas that you have now you can execute? So it’s a whole thing, but classical voice exercises I do quite a bit.

You’ll be performing in Toronto in a few weeks. Do you remember your first time performing in Toronto?

Samara Joy: I don’t know if I remember the first time. I feel like it was in a hall, but I do remember playing at the conservatory, I think at the Royal. I can’t remember what it’s called now. It’s the Royal Conservatory of Toronto. And I remember it being two nights in Toronto. And it was a huge room, I think one of the biggest that I had played up until that point. It was exciting and it was sold out, and it was a lot of new material. The band that I play with now was pretty new at that point. And so I was still maybe convincing certain people that it was worth listening to, even though it’s new, even though it’s not the configuration on the album, it’s still good. And I remember Toronto being very receptive of the music we had to share. So I look forward to coming back.

It was recently announced that you will be LA Phil’s Creative Chair for Jazz. How did you feel when you found out?

Samara Joy: I’ll say when they first approached me about it, I was a bit apprehensive there too, just because I wanted to make sure that the ideas that I had were good enough, and I didn’t know if they were good enough. But now that it’s official, I’ve already been talking to my team and exchanging ideas and getting really excited about the opportunity to not only share some of the songs that we have, potentially, with the orchestra, but also to uplift other areas of either the LA music scene or the New York music scene, or certain, I don’t know, not even collaborations, but just musical events that could in a way draw more attention to jazz and to how cool it is and how many different ways you can explore it. I’m trying not to give too much away of the ideas that I have, but I’m excited for that opportunity. It’s a two-year thing. So I’m looking forward to seeing what we come up with in that time. I think it’s only four shows that I have to present in a year within that two-year span. But I’m looking forward to sharing some of the ideas that I have, and hopefully they’re cool.

You’ve become a prominent voice introducing jazz to a younger generation. What about you and the genre do you think resonates with people who may not have grown up listening to it?

Samara Joy: I’m not sure, but I want to say that because I love the music, I share a certain amount of passion for performing it and for singing it. And maybe that comes across in the songs that I record and the performances that I do, to the point that people who have never listened to jazz before feel something when they hear me or when they hear the music or they hear my band. And so to me, maybe the love is just getting across, and it’s breaking through maybe what people think jazz should sound like, or how it has been presented to people in the past. There are some people who say they never listened to jazz before coming to a show of mine or before listening to a song of mine, which is crazy. So being the entry point is also a new thing. It’s a new adventure and a new idea, a new concept for me. But it’s cool because I love it. So I’m glad that people are loving it too.

With six Grammys, increasing international recognition, and tours, do you feel more pressure now than when you first started making music?

Samara Joy: I feel a lot less pressure than when I started, and I’m grateful for that, because it’s a privilege to have this much control over my career and the direction that I can go so early on. I feel like I didn’t quite understand or step into that control until very recently, maybe as recently as two years ago. Because when I first started, I didn’t know anything about the music industry or making an album or promoting oneself or anything. I didn’t know anything. And so I put a lot of my trust in the people around me, which was a good idea given the fact that I didn’t know anything. But there was a point reached when there was a lot more attention on what I was doing than I was prepared for. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, what do I do now?” And it felt like everybody around me was like, “Well, now you can do anything.” And I was like, “But that’s not really what I wanted to do in the first place, was do music just so that I could do anything.” No crossover or whatever. And so only recently have I felt like, “Oh, I’m going to step into being in control of my creative ideas,” because that aligns with and is immediately connected with the brand. And so I don’t want the brand to be “Oh, she’ll just do anything, because now that she’s got the attention, it’s not really about the music; it’s about anything.” But I want it to always be about presenting something that’s of high quality, something that’s thought out, something that you can obviously tell is because of the love of music rather than the latter. So I feel a lot less pressure now, because also the recognition, for me, initially was for something that I loved and something that wasn’t necessarily super mainstream or anything. It was just me. I was like, “Oh, this is my second album. People like it a lot more than I thought they would.” But they do like it, and that was genuine. That was from the heart. And so I don’t want to take advantage of that relationship between me and the audience because of any award.

If you could collaborate with a jazz legend from any era, who would you want to collaborate with?

Samara Joy: Billy Strayhorn

What’s your favorite song to perform live?

Samara Joy: “Lush Life.” He wrote that song.

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