Samara Joy and Catherine Russell, Two of Jazz’s Great Voices, Grace Miami Stages

Two great ladies of jazz come to Miami for performances including Catherine Russell, above,  pictured with drummer Domo Branch. She’ll kick of the Faena Jazz Series on Wednesday, Feb. 4 in Miami Beach (Photo by Gilberto Tadday, courtesy of Jazz at Lincoln Center)

To hear Samara Joy sing, you would think she had been raised in a jazz club, clambering up on a bar stool in pigtails and sipping Shirley Temples while serenaded with standards from the stage. Truth be told, she comes from a family of gospel singers and didn’t set foot into a jazz establishment until she left home for college.

To hear Catherine Russell sing, you would think she had been raised in a jazz club…and you wouldn’t be far from the mark. With a composer father who led Louis Armstrong’s orchestra and a mother who had toured the country playing with the all-female Sweethearts of Rhythm, her parents’ music was the soundtrack of her earliest childhood. But Russell took another path, opting instead for a rewarding career as a back-up singer for the likes of Cyndi Lauper, Steely Dan, and David Bowie.

While reaching jazz through different paths and separated by a generation—Samara Joy is 26 and Catherine Russell is 69—both Grammy-winning artists sing mid-twentieth century music like it was what they were put on this earth to do. Russell opens this year’s Faena Jazz Series at the Faena Theater on Wednesday, Feb. 4; Samara Joy will play the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall on Thursday, Feb. 12 as part of the Jazz Roots series.

Joy first embraced jazz as her calling as a music student at State University of New York (SUNY) at Purchase.

“I spent a lot of time sort of just immersing myself in the sound and listening to albums, listening to not only vocalists, but musicians as well to sort of figure out what this style of music, what characterizes this style of music,” says Joy, who recorded her debut album before she had even graduated college.

Shelly Berg, Jazz Roots director and dean of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, remembers meeting Joy when she was a teenager.

“She had this timeless voice that, you know, was hearkening back very much to Sarah Vaughn in a way that I hadn’t heard from anybody in a very long time,” he says. Her maturity as an artist, he notes, belies her youth.

“There’s a depth to what Samara does, both in the way she sounds and just in the way she phrases and her musical sensibilities. It’s really quite something,” he says. Berg is astounded at her vocal range, too.

“She’s got those naturally low notes in her,” Berg says, adding that, while high notes can be learned, “You can’t fake low notes. You either have them or you don’t.”

Russell, for her part, returned to her jazz roots only after Bowie stopped touring. With a nudge from her manager (now husband) Paul Kahn, she released her first recording as a solo artist in 2006 and came to see that a career singing jazz and the blues might be an itch she still needed to scratch. Last year, she recorded her 10th album, “Cat and the Hounds,” with Colin Hancock’s Jazz Hounds, and she shows no signs of slowing down.

Like Bowie, who, she recalls, “worked as if he were a band member,” Russell doesn’t see herself as separate from the artists who accompany her. “Being the center of attention isn’t why I got into this business. It was music,” she says.

Accompanying her at her Miami Beach concert will be longtime bandmates Matt Munisteri (guitar and musical direction), Tal Ronen (double bass), Domo Branch (drums) and Ben Paterson (piano).

“I enjoy working with the best players and people who like ensemble work, you know, so we all figure things out together,” she says.

Russell has ardent followers among audiences and fellow musicians alike. Pianist Marcus Roberts, who recently performed “Rhapsody in Blue” with the New World Symphony, counts himself a fan.

“I gotta tell you, I haven’t seen a singer who’s as professional and as warm. She’s really just a beautiful human being, on top of being just a top-level singer,” he says, putting her in a class with the late, great Shirley Horn, another of his favorites.

Berg sees similarities between Joy and Russell, and he has performed with each

“They both have great respect for the tradition. They both come from musical families, so there’s a grounding there that comes out in their music, and I think that’s where you hear similarities.”

In terms of differences, Berg notes that Russell is “quite a student of earlier, more obscure pieces of the repertoire.” Listening to radio stations like WWOZ of New Orleans and even using contacts at the Library of Congress, Russell loves to unearth musical gems from as far back as the 1920s and before, dust them off, and breathe new life into these forgotten treasures. In her choice of material to revive—like “Kitchen Man,” made famous by Bessie Smith in 1929 and 1923’s “He May Be Your Dog, But He’s Wearing my Collar”—Russell shows off the saucy side of early jazz as well as her own playful sense of humor. Roberts says that “Catherine, she just brings the history, but she brings it up to date, you know what I mean? She gives it a twist like only she can do.”

Joy, conversely, has a knack for new media. She has come to be seen in the jazz world as something of a missionary, bringing thousands of young people into the fold with her viral videos on TikTok and Instagram—avenues that, if she has anything to do with it, could become fertile ground for a whole new generation of jazz lovers. And with appearances on programs as diverse as “The Terrell Show” (on YouTube) and “The Today Show” (on the regular tube), her audience reach is about as broad as her three-octave vocal range.

What seems extraordinary even to Joy herself is that she has never had to stray from her artistic ideals to find a public for her work. “My place and my purpose as an artist right now—or forever,” she says, is “to make the music and the art that is most authentic to me. Things that satisfy my curiosity and creativity and also allow me to collaborate with people and musicians who inspire and who introduce me to new things.” Beyond that, she asks, “How do I use music to be a balm and a blessing to others?”

For touring artists like Joy and Russell, to continue making their music night after night in city after city is what Joy calls “a lesson in stamina and endurance.” Russell credits her training as an actor and her daily yoga practice with helping her to be ready for the “marathon,” so that she can be fully present—physically, mentally and emotionally—when she is onstage.

“I think part of our job is to remain receptive to what can happen to you in the moment,” she says. Everyone, from your fellow musicians to the audience has a part to play, believes Russell.

“If you’re not open to being receptive, then the energy doesn’t move. I want the energy to flow freely so that things can happen,” says Russell. “If we’re all open in the moment then we can raise each other’s awareness and inspire each other.”

WHAT: “Faena Jazz Series with Catherine Russell,” opening concert of the 2026 Faena Jazz Series  and “An Evening with Samara Joy,” second concert of Jazz Roots 2025-2026  

WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 4 and 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 12.   

WHERE: Faena Theater, 3201 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, andKnight Center Hall, Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami  

COST: Catherine Russell, $70 – $225; Samara Joy, $52.65 – $152.10, inclusive of fees  

INFORMATION: For Catherine Russell, 786-655-5742 or www.faenatheater.com; For Samara Joy, 305-949-6722 or  arshtcenter.org/jazz   

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