Grammy® Nominated Jazz singer, composer and arranger Carmen Lundy hails from Miami, Florida and received her B.M. degree from the University of Miami. After an early successful career in Miami, Lundy moved to NYC in 1978 and in 1985, she released her first solo album entitled Good Morning Kiss, which topped the Billboard chart for 23 weeks.
Currently on the Afrasia Productions label, Carmen is a 2-time Grammy® Nominated artist for her 16th and newest album Fade To Black, released on September 30, 2022, and her previous album Modern Ancestors, both for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Her 2017 release Code Noir, debuted at #6 on the Billboard Jazz Chart and received both critical and popular acclaim. Carmen’s other releases and discography consist of “Good Morning Kiss” (CLR/Afrasia Productions), “Moment To Moment” (Arabesque/Afrasia Productions), “Night And Day” (CBS/SONY and re-issued by Afrasia in 2011), “Old Devil Moon” (JVC), “Self Portrait” (JVC), “Something To Believe In” and “This Is Carmen Lundy” (both for Justin Time), “Jazz and The New Songbook – Live at The Madrid” (2-disc set and DVD, Afrasia Productions), “Come Home”, “Solamente”, “Changes”, “Soul To Soul” and “Code Noir” (Afrasia Productions). All have topped the Best Albums and Top Ten Albums lists on JazzWeek, Downbeat, and JazzTimes.
In November of 2023, she was awarded the Inaugural Centennial Medal of Honor from the University of Miami as a distinguished alumna, along with such honorees as Gloria Estefan, Jon Secada, and Dawnn Lewis. Among Lundy’s other awards and recognitions are a Grammy® Award for Terri Lyne Carrington’s Mosaic Project, Grammy® Winner for Best Jazz Vocal Album of 2011, which features the Carmen Lundy composition “Show Me A Sign”, with Lundy’s original performance from the album “Solamente” reinvented on the arrangement.
In January 2018, Carmen Lundy received the RoundGlass Music Award for her song “Kumbaya” from Code Noir. In 2016 she was given the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award in Jazz by Black Women In Jazz and The Arts, in Atlanta, GA. Additionally, she was honored with Historymaker status by the esteemed The Historymakers® organization, the nation’s largest African American video oral history collection based in Chicago, IL. Among her other awards and recognitions, especially rewarding was Miami-Dade’s County Office of the Mayor and Board of County Commissioners proclaiming January 25th “Carmen Lundy Day”, along with handing Ms. Lundy the keys to the City of Miami.
As a composer, Ms. Lundy’s catalogue numbers over 150 published songs, one of the few jazz vocalists in history to accomplish such a distinction. Her compositions have been recorded by such artists as Kenny Barron, Ernie Watts, Terri Lyne Carrington, Straight Ahead and Regina Carter. Carmen’s far-reaching discography also includes performances and recordings with such musicians as brother and bassist Curtis Lundy, Ray Barretto, Bruce Hornsby, Mulgrew Miller, Kip Hanrahan, Courtney Pine, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, Randy Brecker, Oscar Castro-Neves, Robert Glasper, Jamison Ross, Patrice Rushen, and the late Kenny Kirkland and Geri Allen among others.
Carmen Lundy’s work as a vocalist and composer has been critically acclaimed by Jazz Times, Downbeat, Jazziz, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Variety, The Washington Post, and Vanity Fair among numerous other foreign publications.
Currently teaching at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music as the Global Jazz Studies Lecturer, Lundy is an esteemed educator, having acted as Resident Clinician at Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. for 20 years. She has conducted Master Classes around the world, among them the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, The Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, Master Classes in Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, and throughout Europe. In 2023, she was named and served as Harvard University Jazz Master In Residence. Lundy also serves on the Board of the Mary Lou Williams Foundation.
Also a burgeoning filmmaker, Carmen’s first documentary, “Nothing But The Blood – The True Story Of The Apostolic Singers Of Miami,” won the prestigious Best Music Documentary Award at its world premiere at the DTLA Film Festival (Los Angeles) in 2022. The Apostolic Singers (featuring singers from several generations of Carmen’s family) have performed for over 40 years in the Florida area and never made a studio recording documenting their incredible gospel voices until December 26, 1991. A true labor of love, “Nothing But the Blood” documents the taping of their first recording session ever, complete with interviews.
In addition, Carmen Lundy is a celebrated mixed media artist and painter, and her works have been exhibited in New York at The Jazz Gallery in Soho, at The Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, and at a month-long exhibition at the Madrid Theatre in Los Angeles, CA. Several of her mixed media sculptures are currently touring and on exhibit at The Carr Center in Detroit, MI and at Emerson College in Boston, MA for the installation “Shifting The Narrative: Jazz And Gender Justice”, curated in part by the celebrated jazz drummer and composer Terri Lyne Carrington.
Ms. Lundy is also a gifted actress active in theatre. “Acting,” as she told Dr. Billy Taylor in 2006, “helps me to get more comfortable and acquainted with the art of performance.” She performed as Mary Lou Williams alongside pianist Geri Allen in the musical “A Conversation with Mary Lou”, directed by S. Epatha Merkerson and written by Farah Griffin, as well as performing the lead role as Billie Holiday in the Off-Off Broadway play “They Were All Gardenias” by Lawrence Holder. She starred in the lead role of the Broadway show, Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Ladies,” and she made her television debut as the star of the CBS Pilot-Special “Shangri-La Plaza” in the role of Geneva, after which she relocated to Los Angeles, where she currently resides.
