Samara Joy seems already marked for success. The young vocalist grew up in New York, surrounded by music. Her grandparents, Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, led the well-known Philadelphia-based gospel group, The Savettes, and her father toured with Gospel artist Andrae Crouch. During high school, she joined the gospel choir at her church, eventually singing three services a week for nearly two years.

Samara’s first exposure to jazz was at Fordham High School for the Arts, where she sang with the jazz band, and won the Best Vocalist title at JALC’s Essentially Ellington competition. She went on to SUNY Purchase College in their jazz program whose excellent faculty includes guitarist Pasquale Grasso and drummer Kenny Washington, who both appear on her debut album, Samara Joy (Worldwind Records). Her hard work at SUNY,from which she graduated in 2021, was rewarded with her first-place win in the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition.

Samara has already performed at the celebrated NYC venues Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, The Blue Note, and Mezzrow and worked with Christian McBride, Cyrus Chestnut, Barry Harris, and pianist Emmet Cohen.

Well-deserved accolades are coming quickly for Samara, the latest–winner of the 2021 Jazz Times Readers Poll in the category Best New Artist and the JT Expanded Critic’s Poll as #1 Best New Artist and in the category Best Vocalist. She has made her first international tour with pianist Emmet Cohen (another Litchfield alum) who, like Samara, won JT Polls accolades. As of this writing she is booked solid. About all this she told one reporter: “Its really overwhelming.”

Samara appears for the first time at Litchfield and performs with the Pasquale Grasso Quartet – Pasquale Grasso, guitar, Ben Patterson, piano, Ari Rolland, bass, and Keith Balla, drums.