Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra featuring Dianne Reeves with Samara Joy: Big Band Holidays

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO), comprising 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players today, has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center resident orchestra since 1988 and spends over a third of the year on tour across the world. Featured in all aspects of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s programming, this remarkably versatile orchestra performs and leads educational events in New York, across the U.S. and around the globe; in concert halls; dance venues; jazz clubs; public parks; and with symphony orchestras; ballet troupes; local students; and an ever-expanding roster of guest artists. Under Music Director Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performs a vast repertoire, from rare historic compositions to Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works, including compositions and arrangements by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, and current and former Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members Wynton Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, Ted Nash, Victor Goines, Sherman Irby, Chris Crenshaw, and Carlos Henriquez. 

Throughout the last decade, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has performed with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic; Cleveland Orchestra; Philadelphia Orchestra; Czech Philharmonic; Berlin Philharmonic; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; London Symphony Orchestra; Sydney Symphony Orchestra; Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; Los Angeles Philharmonic and many others.  Marsalis’ three major works for full symphony orchestra and jazz orchestra, All Rise—Symphony No. 1 (1999), Swing Symphony—Symphony No. 3 (2010), and The Jungle—Symphony No. 4 (2016), continue to be the focal point of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s symphonic collaborations.   

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has also been featured in several education and performance residencies in the last few years, including those in Melbourne, Australia; Sydney, Australia; Chautauqua, New York; Prague, Czech Republic; Vienna, Austria; London, England; São Paulo, Brazil; and many others. 

Education is a major part of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission; its educational activities are coordinated with concert and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra tour programming. These programs, many of which feature Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra members, include the celebrated Jazz for Young People™ family concert series; the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival; the Jazz for Young People™ Curriculum; Let Freedom Swing, educational residencies; workshops; and concerts for students and adults worldwide. Jazz at Lincoln Center educational programs reach over 110,000 students, teachers and general audience members. 

Jazz at Lincoln Center, NPR Music and WBGO have partnered to create the next generation of jazz programming in public radio: “Jazz Night in America.” The series showcases today’s vital jazz scene while also underscoring the genre’s storied history. Hosted by bassist Christian McBride, the program features hand-picked performances from across the country, woven with the colorful stories of the artists behind them. “Jazz Night in America” and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s radio archive can be found at jazz.org/radio. 

In 2015, Jazz at Lincoln Center launched Blue Engine Records (www. jazz.org/blueengine), a new platform to make its vast archive of recorded concerts available to jazz audiences everywhere. The label is dedicated to releasing new studio and live recordings as well as archival recordings from past Jazz at Lincoln Center performances, and its first record—“Live in Cuba,” recorded on a historic 2010 trip to Havana by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis—was released in October 2015. “Big Band Holidays” was released in December 2015, “The Abyssinian Mass” came out in March 2016, “The Music of John Lewis” was released in March 2017, and the JLCO’s “Handful of Keys” came out in September 2017. Blue Engine’s “United We Swing: Best of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Galas” features the Wynton Marsalis Septet and an array of special guests, with all proceeds going toward Jazz at Lincoln Center’s education initiatives. Blue Engine’s most recent album releases include 2020’s “A Swingin’ Sesame Street Celebration” and 2021’s “The Democracy Suite” featuring the JLCO Septet with Wynton Marsalis. 

For more information on Jazz at Lincoln Center, please visit www.jazz.org. 
 
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Featured in George Clooney’s six-time Academy Award-nominated “Good Night, and Good Luck,” Reeves won the Best Jazz Vocal Grammy for the film’s soundtrack.  

Reeves has recorded and performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. She has also recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim and was a featured soloist with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Reeves was the first Creative Chair for Jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the first vocalist to ever perform at the famed Walt Disney Concert Hall. 

Reeves worked with legendary producer Arif Mardin (Norah Jones, Aretha Franklin) on the Grammy winning “A Little Moonlight,” an intimate collection of standards featuring her touring trio. When Reeves’ holiday collection “Christmas Time is Here” was released, Ben Ratliff of The New York Times raved, “Ms. Reeves, a jazz singer of frequently astonishing skill, takes the assignment seriously; this is one of the best jazz Christmas CD’s I’ve heard.” 

In recent years Reeves has toured the world in a variety of contexts including “Sing the Truth,” a musical celebration of Nina Simone which also featured Lizz Wright and Angelique Kidjo. She performed at the White House on multiple occasions including President Obama’s State Dinner for the President of China as well as the Governors’ Ball.  

Reeves’ most recent release “Beautiful Life,” features Gregory Porter, Robert Glasper, Lalah Hathaway and Esperanza Spalding. Produced by Terri Lyne Carrington, “Beautiful Life” won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. Reeves is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the Berklee College of Music and the Juilliard School. In 2018 the National Endowment for the Arts designated Reeves a Jazz Master—the highest honor the United States bestows on jazz artists.  ­ 

 Learn more at www.diannereeves.com. 

Samara is still relatively new to jazz. Growing up in the Bronx, it was music of the past—the music of her parent’s childhoods, as she put it—that she listened to most. She treasures her musical lineage, which stretches back to her grandparents Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, both of whom performed with Philadelphia gospel group the Savettes, and runs through her father, who is a singer, songwriter and producer who toured with gospel artist Andraé Crouch. “Sometimes I catch myself when I’m singing—I’m like, ‘Whoa, that was a dad moment’,” Samara quips. Eventually, she did follow in the family tradition, singing in church and then with the jazz band at Fordham High School for the Arts, with whom she won Best Vocalist at JALC’s Essentially Ellington competition. That led to her enrolling in SUNY Purchase’s jazz studies program, where she fell deeply in love with the music.

Though she’s young, she relishes the process of digging through the music’s history and learning new standards. “I think maybe people connect with the fact that I’m not faking it, that I already feel embedded in it,” Samara says. “Maybe I’m able to reach people in person and on social media because it’s real.” The gatekeepers of the jazz world tend to agree: in 2019, she won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, and she’s since performed with legends like Christian McBride and Bill Charlap. Legendary late pianist Barry Harris was a particularly important influence and mentor. “You inspired me as well as many others with this fire for teaching and playing that couldn’t be dimmed by anything or anyone,” Samara writes in Linger Awhile’s liner notes, dedicating the project in part to Harris’ memory.

Samara is accompanied by esteemed veterans on Linger Awhile as well: her former professors, guitarist Pasquale Grasso and drummer Kenny Washington, form the core of the band, which also includes bassist David Wong and pianist Ben Paterson. With ease and a preternatural assurance, Samara swings right alongside them through understated yet powerful renditions of this creative collection of standards. 

Learn more at samarajoy.com.