Four years from the frays of the pandemic, Tiffany Majette, the New Jersey-born Orion Sun, is finally getting to live her dream out on the road. In the tender confessional on her Brooklyn Steel set on Thursday, November 7, the R&B songwriter reminisced on her first time in the Big Apple (the event marking the second occurrence), though, as she admits, what should’ve been a milestone performance felt like it didn’t really count.
“I was performing to an empty room, to a screen and there were clapping emojis at the end of every song,” she professed. “I remember being really scared that this was the new normal.”
Ever the optimist, Orion Sun didn’t let the stark anecdote’s sentimentality linger around long enough to sour, urging listeners to “don’t think about it too hard” into her lapse of vulnerability, choosing instead to let her music do all the heavy lifting.
Unbeknownst to her, despite all the worldly circumstances, 2020 proved to be a groundbreaking year. The singer-songwriter released two seminal albums, A Collection of Fleeting Moments and Daydreams and Hold Space For Me two months apart at the year’s emergence. And despite the catastrophic shutdowns that began mere days before the release of Hold Space For Me, Orion Sun forged ahead, gaining millions of eager fans with similar grievances and all the time in the world to slow down and listen.
On the stage set in East Williamsburg, a neighborhood teeming with hipsters and bearing a reputation as such, Orion alludes to a childhood of poverty and the embers of hope back when her days felt as dark as the obsidian-drenched room she currently occupied. With a timbre that oozes honey-like sincerity and eau de Jorja (Smith) tonality, she seduces with the throes “Space Jam – An Odyssey,” a track revealing dreams of a faraway home, as someone once intimately familiar with the rows of homelessness and housing insecurity:
“You wear Michael Jordans, I can’t afford them / I got dreams of Paris, I’d love to share them / I wanna go real far, like really, really far,” Orion croons, voice ringing with the disarming tenderness and lucidity of a teenager forced to grow up too quickly.
And travel Orion does, even within the confines of the 20,000-square-foot arena, never beholden to one place or once stagnating as she bounces lightly from left stage to right, surely making up for lost time, vocals even-kneeled and steady alongside improvised yet fluid choreography.
Her status as a former theater kid may serve as the resume for her captivating stage presence and even reserves Orion Sun the right to show off a little, with all the towel-flinging theatrics, a show-stopping megawatt smile, and endless gestures of gratitude in the form of generous leapfrogging daps and unadulterated quirks inundated with outbursts like “throat coat” and cheeky requests for a “No Judgement Zone.” As she leans into the opening acoustics of “These Days,” making promises that it’s really love that keeps us warm on days you’re “trying to keep your head above water,” you’re inclined to believe her, surrendering all lackluster cases against her indomitable thesis.
Fiddling with dials and clacks of a synthesizer, the self-made producer gave a glimpse at the honed skills that allowed her to retain all her masters as the sole writer and producer on her earlier works (“They want a ransom but if you make it yourself, the beat is free,” she sings cheekily in “Sailing”) and which attracted offers from big-time record labels. A twist here and a tap there, a dialed back reverb, and it’s a remix, on the fly: “This sounds better,” she joked, re-upping an intro with the click of a button.
Maybe predictably from someone who earlier in the night confessed to a craving of human interaction, Orion Sun proved to be a flight risk. Traipsing her way from left stage, confusion flooded the room from wall-to-wall as the top of Orion’s head disappeared — and re-emerged moments later in the crowd, weaving through shepherds of long-time fans and their equally enthralled compatriots, who parted for her like the Red Sea, granting her the hearty New York welcome she’d imagined many fortnights ago.
And to the dormant insurrected by her dare-to-dream purview, she leaves a ray of light as a parting gift. “For the creatives, do it for the archive first,” she urged, lessons she’s not only learned the hard way but intrinsically, forever embedded in her discography and way of life.
