SAN DIEGO — How dizzying has Gen Z jazz vocal phenom Samara Joy’s career been since 2023, when she became only the second jazz artist in the seven-decade history of the Grammys to win Best New Artist honors?

The 25-year-old singing sensation now has five Grammy wins to her credit, including for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2023 for her chart-topping “Linger Awhile” and this year for “Portrait.” She also won the 2024 and 2025 Grammys in the Best Jazz Performance category, beating out such heavyweights as Chick Corea, Bela Fleck, Esperanza Spalding and Jon Batiste.

Joy has also done multiple tours of the U.S., Europe and South America. Her current tour extends through Nov. 22. After a weeklong jazz cruise in January hosted by bass great Christian McBride, she will be on the road again from February through mid-May.

But the dizzying list doesn’t end there.

A native of Brooklyn, Joy was the subject of a “60 Minutes” TV feature last December. In June, she was presented with the prestigious Ella Fitzgerald Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival. While she’s far too modest to list her achievements, this unassuming singer now finds herself serving as a gateway to jazz for younger and older listeners alike.

“I wouldn’t pound my chest and say that, because of me, people are starting to appreciate jazz again or to appreciate it on a mainstream level,” Joy said.

“I think I can say that I have introduced it to people who have never heard it before or added another (option) to the playlists of people who have been avid jazz audience members for a long time. It’s really cool when I see younger students come to a show, and say: ‘This is the first time I’ve ever experienced jazz live. I’ve never seen it before or heard it (in person).’

“There are many entry points into this style of music, and it’s nice to be one of them.”

‘It feels pretty surreal!’

Happily, Joy’s impact extends beyond her enthusiastic listeners.

A growing number of aspiring young singers have cited her as an inspiration for them to pursue jazz on their own.

“I’ve had many people say they’ve started singing jazz because of me, or that they’ve reignited their love for it because they have seen what I do,” Joy said. “So, it’s very cool; I didn’t realize I would have that effect on people, especially on this scale. It feels pretty surreal!”

If not surreal, Joy’s rise to international stardom qualifies as highly unlikely.

While she grew up in a family of professional singers, her key inspiration growing up was R&B vocal dynamo Luther Vandross. Joy did not begin to get into jazz, let alone seriously sing it, until she enrolled on a full scholarship at New York’s Purchase College when she was 18.

Or, as Joy put it in her 2023 San Diego Union-Tribune interview:

“It was definitely more of a gradual immersion. Because when I was in my high school jazz ensemble, I only did a couple of songs and that was the extent of our education. We wouldn’t talk about the history of the music or the performers.

“So, I only began to immerse myself in jazz when I got to college, where I applied for the jazz studies program. I’m amazed, to this day, I got in! I sang a (1938) Duke Ellington number, ‘I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart,’ and a hymn.”

She was a quick study.

In 2019, Joy won first-place honors in the prestigious Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. Previous winners include such notable talents as Cyrille Aimee, Jazzmeia Horn and Laurin Talese.

Prior to graduating magna cum laude in 2021 with a degree in jazz studies, Joy released her self-titled debut album. Her accompanists on the recording included two of her professors at Purchase, drummer Kenny Washington and guitarist Pasquale Grasso.

Joy was signed a year later by Verve Records, whose roster over the years has included Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone and — more recently — Diana Krall and Jon Batiste. Her first two Grammy victories, both in 2023, put her in an international spotlight that has yet to wane.

The majority of her initial audience was drawn to Joy through videos she posted on TikTok. What sealed the deal was her winning combination of fresh-voiced enthusiasm and emotional depth, coupled with a reverence for tradition, artistic maturity and command of nuance rare in any singer so young.

“I am, an old soul with youthful energy, spirit and a passion for learning, combined with my love of classic music,” she said in her 2023 Union-Tribune interview.

How much older and more youthful does she feel now, two years later?

“Oh, wow,” she said with a laugh.

“First off, I can’t believe I said that! I feel a little less youthful now, I’ll be honest. But I feel a lot more mature. I have a lot to learn, but feel a lot more sure of myself now than I did two years ago. I feel like I understand my place, whereas then I was still finding it. And I think a lot of lessons have been learned in the past couple of years about what I want to do, what I want my sound to be and the connection with the audience through the music.

“What do I want to share? What do I want to say? Do I want to sing standards all the time? Or do I want to write lyrics to compositions that not a lot of people may have heard, or only a certain group of people, and I get to share it on a larger scale? So I think that, overall, the vision has become much, much clearer, and I’m able to articulate it a lot better. And even if I hear an opposing opinion — if somebody says: ‘No, you should do this, or you should go in this direction,’ I’m able to say very confidently: ‘No, this is what I want to do…’

“I sort of absorb everything that people say, but then I honestly have to think about it and compare it with what I want and see if it matches up.”

In a 2018 Union-Tribune interview, veteran jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater said of her own career: “I know what I want and can override musicians’ opinions, whereas in the beginning, I would defer and do it the way they wanted. Now I say: ‘No, gentlemen, this is how I want it done.’ Over the years, I found my voice the way I hear things and want the sound that all comes from the experience and from learning. So doing all this has given me more confidence as I’ve gotten older.”

Do Bridgewater’s thoughts resonate strongly with Joy, whose band consists almost entirely of enthusiastic young musicians who were her classmates in college?

“Yes. I would agree with that statement,” she said, before adding a caveat.

“I also would venture to say I intentionally surround myself with people who are better than me, musically, in a lot of certain ways, and who might be exposed to a different side of music than me, and I find I learn a lot from them. And because I surround myself with people who are taking the initiative and who are showing me music and artists I have never heard before, it has allowed me to (develop) the confidence that I feel like I have now.

“I’ve been listening to, and absorbing, all this inspiration. And there are people in the music business that don’t do that every day. They absorb what’s popular, or follow a trend or whatever, and are not necessarily following the inspiration of being creative and creating something new. Or not even ‘new,’ but just something original.”

What music have her bandmates introduced her to?

“Well, I had never really listened to Charles Mingus in college, or Eric Dolphy, or Booker Little, or Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, and hearing these musicians who were doing something different for that time… Max Roach, as a drummer, was composing for his band and having people on the front line who were also shaping the sound.

“People like (his wife, singer) Abbey Lincoln, who was writing lyrics and composing songs that were a bit more direct and not necessarily always about love or similar themes, but about what she was seeing during the Civil Rights Movement and during the Black Power movement. And people like (trumpeter) Booker Little, who passed away at 23 in 1961 but already had such a unique and original perspective in music and in composition. And people like (avant-jazz pioneer) Sun Ra, whose compositions were not just unusual in the way that you would think, but maybe more inspired by Duke Ellington and classical composers.

“I would have never known about these artists had I not been around these people who are in my band. Or if I had looked into it, it might have been much later on, rather than being introduced to it now. So, yeah, being able to delve into their minds of what they’re listening to in order to create a unique tone, or a unique compositional style, or a way of playing a melody, (makes me think): ‘Oh, I can interpret a melody in a much different way than I was expecting.’ If I listen to a tenor saxophonist like Ben Webster or to singers like Carmen McRae and Betty Carter, I get the chance to absorb all these influences.”

One influence Joy has been able to absorb in person is Charles McPherson, the internationally celebrated alto saxophonist who has resided in San Diego since the late 1970s. McPherson, 86, and Joy, 25, have developed a mutual admiration society.

Speaking in February in the backstage media room at the 2025 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Joy happily sang his praises as a jazz elder who continues to be a vibrant performer in concert and on record.

McPherson sat in with Joy when she made her 2023 concert debut here at The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center in La Jolla. Joy subsequently sat in with McPherson and his quintet at a New York club date, where she sang a luminous rendition of “Body and Soul.” And she and her band visited McPherson and his wife at their San Diego home prior to Joy’s performance last year in Escondido.

“He opened to his home to us,” Joy said, smiling broadly in a Zoom interview from the living room of her brick-lined Brooklyn home.

“He is obviously an incredible musician, but also a very mindful person and a valuable resource when it comes to living a life as an artist and really pursuing being a musician. We asked him: ‘What are you working on now? ‘What do you after a lifetime of doing this? What are you thinking about and doing now?’

“And his response was — I’m not going to be able to say it as eloquently as he did — but he said something to the effect of: ‘I want to play from the purest place possible.’ And he called it the God-force.”

Joy beamed.

“I want to play from the God-force, too,” she said, “like Billie Holiday on (her 1958) album, ‘Lady in Satin,’ when she was singing in the most purest of ways. She was not worried about comparisons, or about who’s in the audience, or getting too much into her head. Because you can’t play from the purest place and be thinking too highly of yourself. Ego and playing in the purest space can’t exist at the same time. It has to be one or the other.

“So, I really appreciate being able to hear words of wisdom like that from somebody like Charles McPherson. And I appreciate that he’s still here and still playing at the highest level, and that he’s so nice and open as a person. Being able to spend time with him is a rare opportunity and I don’t take it for granted.”

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