Bio

The journey from a deeply held dream to its realization is never easy, seldom rapid. After spending the last couple of years writing, producing & recording the music that is so very much a part of her genetic inheritance, singer /songwriter Joy Mover is taking her first giant step toward actualizing her own lifelong dream with the 2012 release of her self-titled debut, Joy Mover.

To say that Joy’s roots are steeped in music is an understatement of considerable magnitude. Beginning with her great grandfather, through her maternal and paternal grandparents and uncles, on to her parents, brother and cousin, Joy’s family has long been peopled with professional musicians and singers. Her father, Jimmy, like his father Sam before him, is a trumpeter. He played with several big band names including Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Spivak, Horace Heidt, Ina Ray Hutton and Jerry Wald, and has appeared on national television playing his Theremin on “The Tonight Show,” “Ernie Kovaks Show,” “The Daily Show” with John Stewart and many others. He also played the background music for the “Lights Out” radio program hosted by Robert Stack.

Joy’s mother, Barbara, also an actress, was singing with Al Donahue’s big band when her parents first met.

Joy’s older brother, Bob, a widely acclaimed saxophonist who has performed with such jazz luminaries as Chet Baker, Charles Mingus, Jaki Bayard, Art Farmer, Kenny Barron and recently with Esperanza Spaulding, has maintained a highly successful career as a solo performing artists and bandleader in his own right as well. Bob’s daughter, Emilie, is a songwriter whose music has been featured on such popular TV shows as Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty and Ghost Whisperer, and Joy’s cousin, drummer Jonathan, has toured and recorded with such renowned artists as Joe Satriani, Alice Cooper, Aretha Franklin, Steve Howe, and Sting.

Emerging from such a creative familial environment, Joy is forging her own distinctive path on her journey to fulfilling her creative destiny. While honing her musical identity, Joy toiled in the corporate world, working in her ‘spare’ time to develop her chops and style as a songwriter and vocalist. As her corporate career progressed to more & bigger challenges, Joy realized that the demands of her “day job,” which consumed her with significant amounts of time & travel, would make it impossible for her to divide the equal attention necessary for a secondary career as a performing artist/musician.

“I accepted that performing couldn’t be my primary pursuit if I wanted to both feed myself and financially support the recording of my music in the studio,” Joy explains. In exchange for personal and creative autonomy, Joy shifter her focus to becoming both a better songwriter and vocalist, the latter so as to better express the music she was crafting. Most of the songs on Joy Mover were created while Joy travelled for business, recorded into a cassette while in a car or on a plane. “I’d have a musical or lyrical idea- then record it, obsess, improve and gestalt on it till it became a completely formed musical composition; including melody, lyrics and harmonic chord structure,” she continues. “I’d sift these new ideas through an internal filter in a place of meditation and ideal beauty; so that the music was always in motion, being created in the background, despite the foreground ‘reality’ belonging to the 9-to-whatever, demands of my day job.”

Joy has added a new dimension to the family’s musical legacy by revealing her own magical ability to craft and interpret her original songs, six of which see the light of day on Joy Mover. Those originals share space on the CD with her distinctive, inimitable take on such classic tunes as “Nature Boy,” “Till There Was You,” “Corcovado,” “Fever,” and “Dream A Little Dream of Me.”

“My music reflects my strong respect and appreciation for great interpretive musicianship regardless of genre,” she says. “Although my jazz roots are inherent, there are also threads of folk, rock and blues woven into the mix, creating a tapestry that’s not quite the norm in the jazz world.”

Joy’s creative energy was so sparked when working on the material for this CD that she also composed an original verse for the sultry “Fever,” and wrote rap lyrics to introduce her funked-up rendition of “Till There Was You,” layering a thoroughly modern attitude atop the romantic standard with virtually no trace of discord.

That ability to transcend eras and interpretive styles is certainly one of the key elements that sets Joy apart from the multitude of talented vocalists working today. Another is her capacity for attracting incredible musical talent to help her realize her vision. The legendary trumpeter, flautist, saxophonist, flugelhornist and multi-Grammy©-recognized Ira Sullivan (who has known Joy since her childhood) emerged to add his uniquely distinctive stylings on trumpet, alto flute and tenor sax to four tracks. Joy’s brother, Bob, provides strong tenor sax support on two songs, offering up a stellar solo on “Till There Was You” and romping through “Nature Boy.”

Joy tapped the local music scene of her current hometown near Boston for several of the other players joining her on the CD. Guitarist/arranger John Paul, winner of a Billboard Song Achievement award, New England Music Company’s “Best Guitarist” award, and a spot among Jazziz magazine’s “International Top Ten Guitarists,” takes on guitar, bass, synth and vocal duties throughout the project. Paul also arranged several tracks and co-wrote Joy’s instrumental chorus on the original, “Have You Ever Loved?” Another Bostonian, drummer Vinny Demaio, who has worked with such popular artists as Adam Ant, Jody Watley, Wilson Phillips, and Dianna Krall, provides rhythmic support on Joy’s utterly gorgeous rendition of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Corcovado,” as arranged by John Paul.

Hearkening back to her days at the University of Miami’s Jazz Vocal department, Joy also makes use of a strong cadre of musicians from the south Florida musical arena, including pianist/arranger Mike Levine (Jaco Pastorious Big Band, Ed Calle); bassists Jamie Ousley (upright) and Javier Carrion (electric), saxophonist and flutist Billy Ross (James Brown, Julio Iglesias, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme); and drummers Sammy Levine and Lee Levin ( who has performed with Ricky Martin, Julio Iglesias, the Bee Gees, and Jon Secada and has played on more than one thousand recordings for artists such as Christina Aguilera, Pink, Nelly Furtado, Enrique Iglesias, and Kelly Clarkson.) Guitarist Dan Warner (Celine Dion, Justin Timberlake, Shakira, Gloria Estefan, Enrique Iglesias) and percussionist Richard Bravo, whose work on over 800 recordings, including Ricky Martin’s MTV Unplugged and Shakira’s multi-platinum Hips Don’t Lie, has resulted in seventeen Grammy Awards Achievement Certificates, round out the stellar southeast contingent.

Joy’s decision to combine her own striking original songs with distinctively unique interpretations of familiar material, and to surround herself with an assortment of players that both challenge and support her prodigious vocal talents is proof that while this eponymous CD may be her recording debut, she is an artist with a boundless career ahead of her. Joy Mover is, as veteran producer Vinnie Zummo (who is already on board collaborating with Joy on her follow-up CD) says, “a voice to be reckoned with.”