Carmen Lundy And Her Trio Will Appear In Ohio's Capital City

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Jazz songstress extraordinaire Carmen Lundy and her trio will appear at the Columbus Jazz & Ribs Fest, headlining the North Bank Park Stage of the festival at 9 pm on Friday July 22. The Jazz & Rib Fest is a highly anticipated summertime tradition in Columbus, offering both jazz and rib connoisseurs the finest in music and barbeque for more than thirty years. Also appearing at this year's Jazz & Ribs Fest will be Dave Koz, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Mark Flugge Quartet. Local favorites Derek DiCenzo, the Teeny Tucker Band, and the Ft. Hayes All Stars will also appear. (Complete festival schedule at www.hotribscooljazz.org.) This show will mark Ms. Lundy's first visit to Columbus, Ohio, and the outdoor festival styling of the event promises to make the evening an even more special experience. There's something about a truly gifted jazz vocalist cutting loose on a summer night, cascades of notes wafting through gorgeous warm dark that delights and sets the senses alight. Plus the family-friendly set-up of the Jazz & Ribs Fest means that old and young alike can share in the special sonic moments that great jazz music provides.

Accompanying Carmen on this performance will be Anthony Wonsey on piano, Kenny Davis on bass, and Jamison Ross on drums. Lundy and her band have become road warriors this past year: appearing in two separate engagements at New York City's famed Blue Note club, at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Detroit, Michigan's Institute Of Art, and the Artist's Collective in Hartford, Connecticut, among many others. This past April found Carmen and the trio on the festival circuit in Europe. Reviewing one of those festival appearances in Bern, Switzerland, critic Tom Gsteiger wrote, "Since Carmen Lundy oscillates between elegance and risk all the time, she is dependent on high-grade and flexible accompaniment. The pianist Anthony Wonsey and the bassist Darryl Hall are classified as all-around postbop. The young drummer Jamison Ross is at the beginning of his career. Together they are an awesome trio who kept building the momentum throughout the concert until they could hardly be stopped. Continuing in the tradition of Betty Carter and making no concessions to the spirit of the times, Carmen Lundy stands for pure, undiluted jazz."
Some of the material for her Jazz & Ribs Fest performance will be drawn from Solamante, Lundy's latest project and her eleventh CD release, which found Carmen not only writing and producing the album, but also playing every note of music for the project. Layering her at times languorous, at times defiant, at virtually all times sublime vocals over the reach of jazz by bringing her own compositions to the table rather than endlessly rehashing the jazz standards of the past – Carmen says, "People expect for me as a jazz singer to bring a personal and individual interpretation to the standards and nine of my 11 CDs include at least one, so it's not like I haven't done them. But now it's many decades after those songs were written. We're now at the point where there are two or three new generations of people who are interested in our music." Now Wonsey, Davis, Ross, and Lundy combine their talents to expand and refine the ideas and themes presented on Solamente, as well as material from the Live At The Madrid CD and DVD and her earlier releases like 2008's Come Home or 2003's Something To Believe In.
From Switzerland to New York, from Oakland, California, to Boston, Massachusetts, from her home base in Los Angeles, California, Carmen Lundy now sets her sights on Columbus, Ohio. For more information on Carmen, please visit www.carmenlundy.com. Jazz & Rib Fest is presented by the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department and funded through sponsorship from American Electric Power, Bud Light, and Smooth Jazz 103.5 WJZA, among others. The festival runs from Friday July 22 to Sunday July 24. Hours on Friday and Saturday are 11am-11pm, Sunday 11am-8:30pm. Festival location is in The Arena District: North Bank Park, McFerson Commons, and Spring & Long Streets in downtown Columbus. For additional info on the Festival, visit www.hotribscooljazzorg

About Carmen Lundy
Carmen Lundy's work as a vocalist and composer has been critically acclaimed by the New York Times, Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and many foreign publications. Ms. Lundy began her professional career as a jazz vocalist and composer in the mid-1970s, when very few young, gifted and aspiring jazz vocalists were on the horizon. After she moved to New York and started performing regularly at clubs in the Tri-State area, esteemed music critic Gary Giddins took note, writing that "Jazz singing stopped regenerating itself about 20 years ago, and it's not hard to see why, so it's with some trepidation that I call your attention to an authentic young jazz singer named Carmen Lundy - she's got it all."
Over the past 30 years, the Miami native has gone on to record 11 albums as a leader, and has performed and recorded with brother and bassist Curtis Lundy, Ray Barretto, Kenny Barron, Bruce Hornsby, Mulgrew Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kip Hanrahan, Bobby Watson, Courtney Pine, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, Marian McPartland, Regina Carter, Steve Turre, Geri Allen, Robert Glasper and the late Kenny Kirkland. Referred to as, 'One of the world's greatest jazz vocalists..., ' by Blues and Soul Magazine, U.K., Carmen Lundy continues to break new ground in the Jazz genre. Lundy has performed and recorded as a soloist with the Akron Symphony Orchestra and The Vallejo Symphony Orchestra.
Ms. Lundy's 2005 release, the critically acclaimed "Jazz and The New Songbook-Live at The Madrid, " her first live recording, features some of the world's best-known jazz musicians paying tribute to her. The recording is available on both DVD and 2-CD set on her Afrasia label.
While managing the near impossible feat of maintaining a three decade career with mostly self penned material, Ms. Lundy's CD, "Solamente, " is a unique departure from her previous work, as she arranged, produced, recorded, mixed and played every instrument on every track. Ms. Lundy now has over 60 published compositions to her name, a rare achievement for a jazz vocalist, and in 2007 published the Carmen Lundy Songbook.
Ms. Lundy is an active jazz educator. She has given Master Classes in Australia, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, New York, Northern California, and Los Angeles and served as guest artist and clinician in the Jazz Ahead Program at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. She is a gifted visual artist whose paintings have been exhibited in New York at The Jazz Gallery (Soho), The Jazz Bakery and the Madrid Theater in Los Angeles. In addition Lundy is a gifted actress, having performed the lead role as Billie Holiday in Lawrence Holder's Off-Off Broadway play, "They Were All Gardenias, " as well as the lead role in the Broadway revue, "Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies."

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