Review: SAMARA JOY at Southern Theatre
With or without words, Grammy winner nails all the right notes
When people describe Samara Joy as an “American jazz singer,” they aren’t wrong. But they’re missing the point.
With a contralto to soprano range, Joy has one of the most distinctive voices out there. She has won six Grammy Awards in the last three years.
However, as the audience at the mostly packed Southern Theatre learned on March 23, the term “singer” is far too limiting. Perhaps one of the most aptly named performers, she is better described as a “vocal instrumentalist.”
“We started this band and this project over two and a half years ago and we’ve been working every night, honing and strengthening our sound,” Joy told the audience. “I wanted it to be sort of a collaborative incubator so we could create something new together. I wanted to involve everybody, their musicality and personality and put it all down in one place.”
The vocalist’s Columbus stop, the first one on her three-month, 18-show tour, was held in support of the 2026 Soiree Benefit and Concert in support of ProMusica’s artistic and outreach programs. Past luminaries who have performed with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra have included Jon Baptiste, Joshua Henry, Sutton Foster, and Leslie Odom Jr.
“We are so thrilled to have you here, on a Monday evening, no less. I guarantee this will be an electric, fun, and moving evening,” ProMusica CEO Janet Chen said. “She is kicking off her tour here in Columbus. How lucky are we to get to spend an evening with her and her magical light in her company. Our hearts are so full.”
Throughout the concert, she split her performance between two settings. For three songs, she performed with her tight octet of Connor Rohrer (piano), Martin Jaffe (bass), Evan Sherman (drums), Eli Feingold (trombone), Jason Charros (trumpet), David Mason (alto sax/flute), and Kendric McCallister (tenor sax and bass clarinet). For the rest of the concert, Joy and the octet were joined by the 37-member ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Andrew Grams.
The vocalist covered some familiar territory during her over two-hour concert, putting her own spin on jazz standards “Misty,” and “Stardust.” Duke Ellington’s prayer for peace, “Come Sunday,” was written in 1943, during the height of World War II. However, her reading of the song felt as poignant, present, and powerful 83 years later.
Not all of Joy’s songs were so dark. She introduced Betty Carter’s “Beware My Heart” with a cheeky wink.
“We all know what it feels like to have a crush, right?” she said. “I read somewhere a crush is simply a lack of information. There are pieces of information you must know before you go any further and sometimes there are feelings you have to push down.”
While Carter’s song is a precautionary tale of love, one of the band’s own collaborations was a celebration of it. The lyric-less “5 Stages of Love” was composed and orchestrated by her tenor saxophonist Kendric McCallister.
During the 10-minute instrumental, Joy never sang a word. Her scat singing functioned less like embellishment and more like another instrument—trading phrases with the horns, answering the piano, and driving the piece forward. Her improvised intonations conveyed a depth and emotion that went far beyond any lyric.
“So many wonderful (love) songs have been written, but this one is an original composition and it is completely wordless,” she said. “If you know what love feels like and all of its many (arching her eyebrows), you know … you know. Hopefully you can fill in the blanks. I'll feel like we’ll understand each other a lot better by the time we get to the finish.”
And by the end of the evening, the performer had made good on her promise: the audience understood her—and each other—a little better, not through lyrics, but through the language of sound itself.
Photo credit: Gus Black
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