Latest news with #SamaraJoy
The Guardian
27-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
TV tonight: the astonishing mobile phone network for gangs
9pm, Channel 4 EncroChat was a mobile phone network – or 'the dark web in your pocket' – used by organised crime gangs across the world. But in 2020, international authorities managed to hack these phones and read messages for 74 days, many of which revealed imminent threats to life, before the criminals realised. This astonishing four-part documentary speaks to insiders about how they did it and what happened next. Hollie Richardson 8pm, ITV1 The youthful detective who specialises in cold cases tries to solve the 40-year-old kidnapping of an oil heiress and her baby. Despite diving further into the victim's life and meeting the baby's dad, she hits a brick wall and gets threatened with having her case closed down. Can she prove her theory? Alexi Duggins 8pm, BBC Four This Prom should be a real crowd-pleaser: New York jazz singer Samara Joy is only 25 but has already won five Grammys with her faithful renderings of beloved old songs. Andi Oliver introduces a performance by Joy and her octet that celebrates the legacies of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus and Oscar Peterson. Jack Seale 9.15pm, BBC One The atmospheric epic about an Australian war hero reconciling with his past continues. In the present, Dorrigo (Ciarán Hinds) is having an affair – but his mind is taken back to another illicit yet poignant entanglement he had in the 40s (with Jacob Elordi playing his younger self). We also see the full horrors that he endured while building the Burma railway. HR 10pm, Channel 4 It stars Elisabeth Moss and was created by Steven Knight but this spy thriller unfortunately doesn't live up to its pedigree. MI6 agent Imogen (Moss) and terror suspect Adilah (Yumna Marwan) keep on with their uneasy journey – but with the CIA close to a breakthrough and Imogen suspicious of Adilah's motives, something has to give. Phil Harrison Women's International Football: Euro 2025 Final, 3.30pm, ITV1/4pm, BBC One England defend their title at St Jakob-Park in Basel, Switzerland.
Forbes
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Saturday Conversation: Christian McBride Goes Cruising On World At Sea
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 30: Christian McBride speaks onstage during the Jazz at Lincoln Center ... More Gala on April 30, 2025 in New York City. (Photo byfor Jazz At Lincoln Center) One of the great bassists in any genre of music, jazz giant Christian McBride has turned his nine time Grammy-winning career as a musician's musician – he is so revered by his peers that he just reunited The Police's Sting and Andy Summers for the first time since the band's reunion tour wrapped in 2008 – into several prestigious side gigs, including hosting NPR's Jazz Night in America. The latest prestigious opportunity is his own cruise, McBride's World at Sea. Launching in January 2026, the inaugural cruise finds McBride inviting guests from all walks of his storied career. Featuring younger stars like fellow Grammy winner Samara Joy, L.A.'s Jose James and New York rising star Nicole Glover, as well as veteran Grammy-winning vocalists such as Angelique Kidjo and Ledisi, pianist Benny Green, trumpeter Brandon Lee and more. The cruise will also feature comedy from Alonzo Bodden and George Wallace. Even as a veteran of the cruise world, McBride admits it is a little overwhelming to have a journey named after him. But he is excited and honored for year one of McBride's World at Sea. I spoke to him about the cruise and being one of the premier ambassadors of jazz at this point in his career. Steve Baltin: How does it feel having your own cruise? Christian McBride: Man, this is a pretty incredible undertaking. I've never had anyone bet their career on my musical world, so to speak. Baltin: In a way you kind of have though, because look at all the great people you've played with. Just by playing with you, they kind of are. But it's got to be a great compliment that everybody wants to be associated with you for this. It's an insane lineup. McBride: Thank you very much. There's a combination of getting the business done and making sure all of the things are put into place. And then there's the other part of it, like, 'Hey, this is your own cruise with your name on it, with your musicians on there and people who you've been associated with.' So, it's like a small snapshot. It's like an express snapshot of my career, and that's a little bit of a scary thing to see, but ultimately, I think it's going to be fun. Baltin: You say it's scary, but at the same time it's got to be huge that all these people want to be associated with you and that they want to do the cruise with you. I mean, that's putting trust in. Also, you've been involved with Newport Jazz Fest for almost a decade. Weren't you involved in kind of curating and helping pick that as well? It feels like there would be some similarity. McBride: The difference is people will come to play at the Newport Jazz Festival no matter who the artistic director is because of the history of the festival. But the Christian McBride's World at Sea cruise is a brand-new thing. Granted, most of the musicians who come to both Newport and who are coming to perform on the cruise, I have personal relationships with, so it does help. But until the McBride's World at Sea Cruise has a 71-year run like Newport, I won't take myself too seriously. Baltin: What are your hopes for the cruise? McBride: Since it's the first time, I really have no expectations. I'm just curious to see how it all unfolds. Everybody I'm inviting are good friends, we've all worked together. And most of all, they're all professionals. They've done many cruises before. They've done the Jazz Cruise, they did the old Blue Note Cruise, and so they're professional veterans who are also my friends. So, the only expectations that I have is that there'll be a lot of great music and a lot of great fun. Baltin: How do you approach playing on a cruise where people are seeing you every night? I feel like it's similar to a residency. McBride: That's not much different than playing, like you said, even if it's not a residency, just playing a week at the Village Vanguard. But certainly on a cruise if you play with the same group every night and basically the same pool of people are coming to see you play, you're forced to change up the show every night. And I think that's a really cool thing. I like the fact that I cannot repeat myself because I don't want people to say, "Oh, I heard y 'all play that set last night." And some bands will do that. They have a set list and that's what they do. But I like the fact that being on this cruise, you got to change it up. I'm a veteran of cruises. I did my first jazz cruise. Maybe it was 2014, 2015. I can't remember. The gentleman who is the executive director of all of these cruises, his name is Michael Lazaroff. He's been running the jazz cruises for many years. Yeah, I've done the Jazz Cruise and the Blue Note Sea Cruise on and off for over a decade. So yes, I know how the cruise world runs. But also in the '90s, George Weene tried a Newport Jazz Festival Cruise. It didn't last, I think he only did it for one or two years maybe, but I did that too. That was in the 90s. So yeah, the cruise circuit is a very prolific place for musicians. Well, you know, Baltin: How did the idea come about to do it with your name? And what did you first say when they came to you and said, hey, we want to literally put your name on a cruise for a week. Did you look at them and say what the hell's wrong with you or were you insanely flattered? McBride: Exactly. It was a lot of the first, a little of the second. In fact, I'm still saying that. I think what happened was after having done the Jazz Cruise for so many years, I had, after maybe five years, become the official host of the Jazz Cruise. And there were three main cruises that would go back-to-back to back. It was the Jazz Cruise, the Blue Note at Sea Cruise and the Smooth Jazz Contemporary Jazz Cruise. The Jazz Cruise was pretty much known as a straight up and down, right down the middle acoustic straight ahead cruise. The Blue Note Cruise was a combination of the Jazz Cruise and the Contemporary Jazz Cruise because the music and the artists that would play that Blue Note Cruise were much younger. Robert Glasper would play that cruise. Kamasi Washington would play on that cruise. Layla Hathaway would do that cruise as well as somebody like Joe Lovano, or myself, or Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redmond, or somebody like that. Then the Contemporary Jazz Cruise, which was all straight, smooth jazz. The Blue Note Cruise went away, and Michael said to me, 'We really would like to have a cruise that musically fits the template of what the Blue Note Cruise was. You get your straight-ahead jazz You get your electric jazz, you get your contemporary jazz. You get everything all In but it's still unmistakably a jazz cruise. We think having a McBride cruise would be the way to do it. I said, 'You are out of your mind.' And they said, 'Look, man, we feel that what you've done in your career is exactly what we want.' Baltin: Between Jazz Night in America and the cruise do you feel like in a way, you've become an ambassador for jazz? McBride: I feel like I'm in a good place right now. I really enjoy investing and staying interested in what's going on in the contemporary world and investing in the future. But I carry Ray Brown with me everywhere I go. I carry Ron Carter with me everywhere I go. I carry Bootsy with me everywhere I go. I carry Jaco Pastorius with me everywhere I go. I am a product of all these great legends who allow me to play with them and make mistakes with them when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. So, I'm never going to look at that and say, well, just on general principle, we have to shed that skin and go toward the future. No, you never shed that skin. It stays with you. It's part of your DNA. It's part of your story. It's in your blood. It's in your bone marrow. Everybody thinks trying to consciously be like Miles Davis is the way to go. Everybody can't be Miles Davis. In fact, I think one of the greatest examples of bridging the gap is Herbie Hancock, because while Herbie Hancock was setting a new standard in the 70s with jazz funk, with dance music in the 80s with Rockit, he still started playing straight -ahead jazz. In fact, most of the performances he did were straight-ahead jazz. That's a template that I think is very important for people to look at.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Grammy-winning jazz singer Samara Joy returns to Detroit for Wednesday riverfront concert
The most celebrated jazz singer of the last five years is returning to Detroit on Wednesday for an evening of music on the Detroit River. At just 25 years old, Samara Joy has captured the hearts — and the ears — of the music industry, with five Grammys already to her name after her 2021 self-titled debut and 2022's 'Linger Awhile' established her as the darling of the jazz world. She'll perform Wednesday, June 4, at downtown Detroit's Aretha Franklin Amphitheater. During the concert, Joy will perform songs from her third full-length album, 2024's 'Portrait.' The classy, inspired set finds the singer tackling standards such as "Day by Day," "No More Blues (Chega de Saudade)" and "You Stepped Out of a Dream," while also reaching new breakthroughs in her artistry, writing lyrics to existing melodies by legendary composers and stretching her voice in unexpected ways. It takes a highly ambitious artist to not only compose lyrics for a complicated and demanding tune like Charles Mingus' 'Reincarnation of a Lovebird' — to then attempt to sing it is a whole other mountain to climb. Joy pulls it off dynamically with a stylish, virtuoso performance that announces she's no flash in the pan, and she's only going to become greater with time. 'With 'Reincarnation,' I only wrote the words,' she said, 'and I enjoy doing that because I feel like it allows me to listen with intent and find words and a story that melds with the story already being told by the melody. It took me about a year to get the words right, and even more time to sing it right, but it also gave me an opportunity to expand my repertoire in a different way, and sing melodies that weren't necessarily written for the vocalist — to challenge myself.' One of Joy's early teachers was not just a Detroiter, but the legendary composer/pianist/educator Barry Harris, who died in 2021 at age 91. On 'Portrait,' she also penned lyrics to a melody of his, 'Now and Then (In Remembrance Of).' 'The song was composed by him,' she said, 'and I only really stopped to listen to it after he passed. I realized not only what a beautiful song it was, but it just kind of felt like listening to him in a song. It felt like I could really see his face whenever I listened, and hear him speaking, so I wanted to write lyrics dedicated to him and the inspiration that he gave me, but also dedicated to all the mentors in our lives. When we cross paths with them, our whole perspective changes, and that's what he did for a lot of people.' Joy, a Bronx native, also confided she's beginning to think about material for her next project. 'As I'm listening to music, I take note of what I like and what I'm gravitating toward naturally,' she said, 'and right now, that's (seminal jazz composer and arranger) Billy Strayhorn. I read his biography written by David Hajdu about a year ago, and I just loved it. I was listening to his music in a new way after reading that, so maybe I would like to delve into his repertoire.' Though Joy has played Detroit many times over the last several years, this will be her first time on the waterfront Aretha stage. 'I'm happy to come back,' she told the Free Press. 'I'm so excited, and the energy Detroit gives is always No. 1.' Samara Joy will perform, along with the Urban Art Orchestra, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 4, at Detroit's Aretha Franklin Amphitheater, 2600 E. Atwater. Tickets start at $26.75 and can be purchased at Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at dbeddingfield@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Grammy-winning jazz singer Samara Joy returns to Detroit Wednesday
Wall Street Journal
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Where Jazz Singer Samara Joy Keeps Her Five Grammys
Samara Joy, 25, is a jazz singer and the winner of five Grammy Awards. Her most recent album, 'Portrait,' was released last year, and she currently is on a global tour through the fall. She spoke with Marc Myers. I grew up in the past. I think this is true of many people who are close with their parents and enjoy their taste in music. You can't help it.
Spectator
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Why can't the BBC Proms stick to classical music?
Welcome to this year's BBC Proms, the self-styled 'World's Greatest Classical Music Festival', whose programme was revealed today. Every year I write about how even The Proms, which bills itself unambiguously as a festival of classical music, can't bring itself to be just that: a festival of classical music. And every year it gets worse, with the idea of 'inclusion' so pervasive that music which has as much to do with a classical music festival as my pet cat would have at Crufts taking over ever more evenings. This year's schedule is the final straw. On day two, the Proms presents 'The Great American Songbook and Beyond' with Samara Joy, which is followed by 'Round Midnight' with 'hip hop artist Soweto Kinch'. That's followed a few nights later by Angeline Morrison singing folk songs from her album 'The Sorrow Songs', and then Arooj Aftab and Ibrahim Maalouf with their 'captivating, eclectic melting-pot of influences from jazz, folk, pop, blues and South Asian' and 'Middle Eastern melodies…jazz, Latin jazz, and African rhythms' respectively. There's an evening of Soul Revolution, which will 'trace a path from spirituals through gospel to soul, revealing the role of these genres in supporting the Civil Rights movement.
