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| This is Carmen Lundy |
| Carmen Lundy |
| első megjelenés éve: 2001 |
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| (2001)
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CD |
| 3.906 Ft
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| 1. | All Day, All Night
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| 2. | This Is the End of the Love Affair
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| 3. | Now That He's Gone
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| 4. | Better Luck Next Time
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| 5. | Send Me Somebody to Love
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| 6. | (I Dream) In Living Color
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| 7. | Is It Love
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| 8. | One More River to Cross
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| 9. | Seventh Heaven
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Jazz / Vocal
Mayra Casales - percussion (on tracks 01, 05 and 06)
Onaje Allan Gumbs - piano (on tracks 03, 07 and 08)
Victor Lewis - drums (on tracks 05 and 06)
Kevin Louis - flugelhorn and trumpet
Curtis Lundy - bass
Carmen Lundy - voice
Ralph Peterson Jr. - drums (on tracks 01, 02, 04, 07, 08 and 09)
Mark Shim - soprano saxophone and tenor saxophone
Bobby Watson - alto saxophone
Anthony Wonsey - fender rhodes (on tracks 02 and 08) and piano (on tracks 01, 04, 05, 06 and 09)
Carmen Lundy entered my life on a page in The Village Voice on April 26,1983. In his column, the astute jazz critic Gary Giddins wrote: " I call your attention to an authentic young jazz singer named Carmen Lundy ... She's got it all."
I paid immediate attention, and not long after called to ask her to sing at a paid benefit for The Mary Lou Williams Foundation. I had managed the career of the great pianist-composer for the last seventeen years of her life and now headed up the foundation that bore her name. That foundation existed to expose children to jazz and to preserve the music of Mary Lou Williams. Carmen agreed to do the concert and even included some of Mary Lou's tunes.
It turned out that Carmen and I were actually neighbors living on the same block in New York. We soon became very good friends which led to my managing her for some four years in the eighties. She, being an all round musician and leader, trained and directed The New York Boys Choir in performances of Mary Lou's Mass during that time, a work sponsored by The Foundation, as well as constantly working as a singer.
During that period Carmen had a faithful sponsor in the person of Jack Tamen, who backed several of her special live concerts, including one at Irving Plaza. One evening, as Carmen and I were out walking, she was planning aloud for another appearance. I interrupted saying: "If Jack is willing to invest, why not approach him about funding a recording?" He was willing. Thus it came about that Carmen Lundy made her first LP, Good Morning Kiss, backed by Jack, produced by herself and co-produced by me, and now still available in a special limited edition on Ms. Lundy's own label (Carmen Lundy Records - CLR). Out of eight selections on that debut album, five were strong original compositions - a daring move for a young and previously unrecorded jazz singer. But it has been her intention from the very beginning to present herself not only through the power and sincerity of her singing but also through her own songs. We expect and demand that country, rock, blues, and soul singers use original material. And though we have also long expected original music from jazz instrumentalists, jazz singers seem to be restricted to a traditional repertoire drawn from the Great American Songbooks. In more recent times, however, this has begun to change. First with Betty Carter, then more recently with Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn, and in a consistent way with Carmen Lundy. She has always included originals in her recorded work.
In the intervening fifteen years Carmen Lundy has recorded under varied circumstances; five additional albums under her own name (one of them, to contradict myself, all standards - but this was a special case); on two of her brother Curtis Lundy's albums (one for Justin Time); with Ernie Watts; with Courtney Pine; with Billy Childs in his major work The Distant Land written for lead vocal, African percussion, and The Akron Symphony Orchestra (her training for opera is heard to moving effect in this large piece as well as her ability as a jazz singer); with Walter Bishop, Jr; with Geri Allen and a septet, together with a large mixed chorus, in the leading vocal role in Mary Lou's Mass (unreleased to date); and with Kip Hanrahan at least four times.
This time, very much encouraged by her brother Curtis Lundy, the bassist and producer, Carmen has presented us with all original material. The theme is love in its many forms (including 'true love' despite-the Cole Porter lyric): the erotic ("All Day, All Night"); the romantically erotic ("Is It Love"); love past ("This Is The End Of A Love Affair'); love past & future ("Better Luck Next Time"); yearning for love to come ("Send Me Somebody") which could become a hit; widely embracing benevolent love toward others ("In Living Color'; even anthems (or hymns) which pray for courage and inspiration ("One More River To Cross" and "Seventh Heaven").
The songs are laid out in perfect sequence, emotionally and musically, and form what might be called a complete score, a full work - a program which would provide an intense hour on the concert stage. Expanded, it might be worked into what used to be called "a one woman show."
The music is rich and varied. All of it has been arranged, as well as composed, by Carmen Lundy. She has even arranged the driving horns on "Better Luck Next Time" (which, by the way, would make a blistering instrumental - as arranged here it sounds like a big band though there are only two horns) This musical explosion is also due, in large part, to the dynamic drums of Ralph Peterson. Carmen also arranged the horns on "Seventh Heaven." The woman, I tell you, is a musician. Speaking of musicians she, her brother Curtis, and saxophonist Bobby Watson, have been together, in one way or another, for twenty-five years, since their days at The University of Miami where they went to class by day and worked six nights a week in clubs. They are the last generation of musicians who graduated both from The University of the Streets and an academic institution. These days most young musicians come simply from the schools. Curtis also contributes the horn arrangements on "All Day, All Night" but it is to Bobby Watson that special attention must be drawn for his sophisticated and subtle horn arrangements. His work makes "This Is The End Of a Love Affair" a more emotionally moving experience. The Bacharach-like approach turns this into a very sunny song while the sorrow of a lyric which is able to rhyme "heavenly bliss" with "bitterness" deepens, by way of contrast, the regret.
Asked about her influences, Carmen first spoke of the many musicians she worked with during her many years in New York. Among them were Walter Bishop Jr, Don Pullen, Jaki Byard, Hugh Lawson and Kenny Barron. I myself heard her work with many strong musicians of her own generation: most notably with the pianist Harry Whitaker, but also with Kenny Kirkland (whose feeling and a clave figure often used by him - is all over "Seventh Heaven"), Onaje Allan Gumbs, Victor Lewis, John Hicks, Larry Willis, and many others.
When asked about singers Carmen replied that she observed all the great singers as they came through New York, all of whom were kind in talking to her and encouraging her: Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, and especially Betty Carter at many concerts, since her brother was a longtime member of Betty's trio and repeatedly put Carmen on the guest list for Betty's appearances. Influenced also by the presence and command of Nina Simone, and with the help of acting lessons, Carmen's confidence grew. She has always been a vivid performer to me - perhaps, even more so today.
Nowadays, fully confident and definitely knowing who she is, she enters, always beautifully gowned, struts straight to the mike, commands the stage, joyfully embraces the audience and the musicians with her exuberant presence and smile, and begins to sing. She sets the tempo, and the flow, with head, hand, and body movement, and pours forth the music in her rich full contralto.
In her early years she thought that what she had to contribute to the music on the bandstand was the beauty of her voice. She was, however, able to get past all the correctness implied by her voice training. As she worked with musicians/she thought it her obligation to compete with them in improvising, and so she turned in her share of highly calibrated scat solos, She then began to listen extensively to Billie Holiday. "I listened to every last record" she says "and found the experience very sobering." In her entire recorded work Holiday scatted only one introduction to a title recorded with a big band. The experience freed Lundy to form her own strong style. She's a post-traditionalist, anchored to all the great music in the jazz tradition, especially its singers, but she also draws on many other aspects of popular music and is part of the great search and creative expression of her own generation. One of the most exhilarating pieces on this CD is "(I Dream) In Living Color," a buoyant paean to life, love, and hope. The lyric contains generous and expansive phrases, matched with upward reaching melody lines which, as sung and played here, promote a feeling of well-being. There is a particularly moving line which could only have been written by a woman: "I dream of a little girl who can move any mountain out of her way". It is a line, which also summons up Carmen Lundy herself whose persistence has always moved one mountain or another.
The introduction begins with strong punctuating chords from pianist Anthony Wonsey (a musician from a younger generation) and with horns so beautifully present as arranged by Bobby Watson. As Carmen begins to lay out the song, Wonsey goes into accompaniment mode, the horns continue, the singing is open and assured, we are enveloped in warmth and invited to largeness of heart. Wonsey gets to solo extensively during this composition. Notice how seamlessly his first solo emerges, beginning, as it does, beneath the last measure of the vocal. Just when we think we might be subjected to something typical, namely a long stretch of piano solo, we are treated to compositional unity created by the continued use of the horns behind the solo, and then Carmen is back in at the bridge.
In live performance Carmen Lundy prowls in front of the band listening closely to what the musicians are playing. Once the song has been established, she may respond almost immediately by improvising, not with cliched syllables, but with words from the song. This is a very big piece of her method. It keeps her vividly present throughout but does not block the improvisation from the instrumentalists behind her. This is cooperative improvisation - simultaneous improvisation from different concurrent soloists with the voice on top using words - each challenging the other in a new variation on 'call and response' - a very old tradition in black music. Let it be noted that Curtis does not take a conventional bass solo at any point on this recording. But also notice that he is constantly changing his attack, creating new and exciting bass lines, a kind of improvisation that propels the composition forward even as he sustains the music.
"(I Dream) In Living Color" very much renders on record how Carmen is experienced in live performance. Again, once the song is laid out, and when the composition takes a new turn after the lyric with a fresh percussive figure, everyone begins to improvise on a modified, and modal, twelve bar blues, derived from the tune. I say everyone, for though a good deal of time is given to pianist Wonsey, the drums never leave, the bass is constantly varying, the horns never stray, and Carmen does not depart, (she now does the punctuating with her words) and, at the peak of excitement, she does break into scat, using fresh sounds of her own and notes created from one of the great compositional periods of Miles Davis. Notice again, the horns do not leave during her scat chorus. Then she calls for horn ("I want to hear some trumpet") and subsequently for 'alto', Wonsey punctuates the trumpet solo, as the horn had punctuated previous passages, while the mix behind Bobby Watson's spare and deeply emotional solo is a stroke of genius on the part of the producer of this recording. Though done in a studio, this is very much Carmen Lundy Live. This is jazz now. Music like this makes me glad to be alive.
I cannot end without speaking of the surpassing beauty of the two ballads. "Now That He's Gone" takes advantage of Kevin Louis, the youngest member of the band, and his muted trumpet. Just before recording this song, Carmen went over to Louis and asked him to portray through his horn the 'she' in the lyric. And so we have here the interesting reality of a man very tenderly rendering the broken hearted feelings of a woman. And on "Is It Love," taken at a very slow tempo indeed, one would have to go to the musical embrace of Billie Holiday and, no, not Lester Young, but Ben Webster for an apt comparison. The ascending and descending short phrases for tenor are arranged by Carmen Lundy. The rest is Mark Shim, another member of a younger generation.
Here are some facts about Carmen Lundy; she designs beautiful garments and knows how to sew and wear them; she looks very good in black; she has studied acting and appeared in Sophisticated Ladies in the leading role; she has played Billie Holiday in They Were All Gardenias on the New York stage; she has appeared in a pilot for television; she paints (very strikingly) in oils and has exhibited (and sold) some of her work which makes her a professional in more than one art; she likes cut flowers and lit candles and a glass of good red wine; she composes and arranges music; she also writes lyrics for much of her music and is, therefore, a songwriter; she has her own music publishing company and her own record company, and she maintains a website; but more than all these things Carmen Lundy sings!
---Rev. Peter F O'Brien, S.J. Jersey City, N.J. (USA) August 14, 2001
Peter O'Brien is a Roman Catholic priest and a member of The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). He is on the staff of Resurrection Parish in Jersey City, NJ He is also the Executive Director of The Mary Lou Williams Foundation, Inc. and Cecilia Music Publishing Co. He works out his salvation in his Church and with its people, but he is also buoyed up by the musicians, singers, dancers, writers, and performers (all in the creative vein) whom he reveres and loves.
* Allan Tucker - Mastering
* Ariel Borujow - Assistant Engineer
* Billy Szawlowski - Engineer
* Eric Hollis - Wardrobe
* Jean-Pierre Leduc - A&R
* Jim West - Executive Producer
* Lalette LittleJohn - Make-Up
* Langston Hughes - Poetry
* Peter Figen - Photography
* Reid Morris - Graphic Design
Carmen Lundy's first outing on the Justin Time label is also her first to feature all-original material. The classy vocalist is joined by an impressive cast: Curtis Lundy (Carmen's brother/producer) on bass, Onaje Allan Gumbs or Anthony Wonsey on piano, Ralph Peterson or Victor Lewis on drums, Bobby Watson on alto, Mark Shim on tenor, Kevin Louis on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Mayra Casales on percussion. Lundy wrote the music, the lyrics, and the arrangements, and much of it is impressive, particularly the difficult melody line she sings in unison with the horns on "Better Luck Next Time." In the production booth, however, Curtis Lundy relies a bit too heavily on fadeouts. The three/four ballad "Now That He's Gone," the mellow bossa "Send Me Somebody to Love," and the ambitious jam vehicle "(I Dream) In Living Color" would have benefited from real endings; the fades on these tracks sound like the creative equivalent of pulling the plug. Instrumental detail livens up some otherwise pedestrian material (e.g., the horn lick on the outro of "This Is the End of a Love Affair" and Mark Shim's tenor filigree and solo [and Ralph Peterson's brushes] on "Is It Love"). Lundy ups the ante, lyrically speaking, on the last two tracks: "One More River to Cross," co-written with Deborah Ash, deals with spiritual striving and contains a recitation of a Langston Hughes poem, while "Seventh Heaven," dedicated to the late pianist Kenny Kirkland, is a dramatic plea for peace.
--- David R. Adler, All Music Guide
Carmen Lundy
Active Decades: '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Nov 01, 1954 in Miami, FL
Genre: Vocal; Jazz
Styles: Post-Bop, Standards, Vocal Jazz
The sister of bassist Curtis Lundy, Carmen is a talented singer who is also a composer (writing a good portion of her repertoire), actor, and painter. After studying at Miami University, she moved to New York in 1978, where she worked with Ray Barretto and formed her own trio in 1980, using such pianists as John Hicks and Onaje Gumbs. Lundy recorded for Blackhawk (1987) and Sony (1988) and appeared in the plays Sophisticated Ladies and They Were All Gardenias, portraying Billie Holiday in the latter. In 1991, she moved to Los Angeles and has recorded for Arabesque (1992) and JVC. Although open to the influences of folk, R&B, and pop, Carmen Lundy is a strong improviser.
---Scott Yanow, All Music Guide |
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