The Annual Hot Columbus Jazz & Ribs Fest Feat Carmen Lundy | July 22nd, 2011

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.”