Jazzism Magazine last issue ever (December issue)! This is the end of an era as the magazine is closing down. It was impossible to find the now collector’s item. For you non-dutch speakers, here’s the translation: “Lucy loves grand arrangements and flourishes in the entourage of a big band. In 2013 she was guest vocalist with Snarky Puppy, now she has her own eighteen Rocketeers from jazz metropolis Rotterdam. With lots of horns with which she can blaze. When Lucy brings a jazz cover, she leaves the original but at the same time stays deep in the spirit of the song. With arrangements by Louk Boudesteijn and Jelle Roosenburg you can expect that will add a satisfying dimension. Not the easy way. How do you do justice to Simone, Fitzgerald & Flack without playing copycat? Let lucy loose. Even king Elvis is taken for the crown without doing him short. Classics like Plain Gold Ring, Tryin’ Times, Love Me Tender, A Flower is a Lovesome Thing and own her own song Rocketeer are powerful, driving, sensitive and lived. Recorded in Lantarenvenster in Rotterdam. Bullseye!” (schot in de roos = bullseye!)
The sensual and talented Lucy Woodward has delivered captivating performances of rhythm & blues, soul, and rock over the past decade, stepping away from her early pop successes. She has also made remarkable contributions to jazz, starting with her early participation in the album by Joshua Shneider’s Love Speak Orchestra and her long collaborations with the group Snarky Puppy and guitarist Charlie Hunter.
Her current project—produced alongside Louk Boudesteijn, leader of the New Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra—is something special: Lucy's exceptional vocal talents shine in the blend with the colorful and imaginative orchestral writing of the Dutch arranger, reaching a peak in “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing” by Billy Strayhorn and “Tryin' Times” by Donny Hathaway. In the latter piece, the frenetic arrangement is crafted by Dutch guitarist Jelle Roozenburg, who has previously composed for the aforementioned New Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra and other ensembles shared with Woodward and Boudesteijn. The album is the singer's seventh as a leader and her first live recording, featuring an international orchestra of musicians based in the Netherlands, including Italian saxophonist Nicoló Ricci and Ghanaian trumpeter Peter Somuah.
The musical journey unfolds in just thirty minutes but is intense and full of surprises. It opens with "Plain Gold Ring," a classic by Nina Simone, a singer whom Woodward counts among her primary influences: the beginning is solemn, almost gospel, but within minutes, the tension rises with a dramatic contrast between the vocal part and the tumultuous arrangement, returning to a calm (but not reconciled) finale.
Sound explosions, rhythmic fragments, and sharp timbral contrasts characterize the subsequent "Tryin' Times," where Lucy dramatically reinterprets the distant versions by Roberta Flack and the original composer. After the gentle "Love Me Tender," with its childlike grace, the mood ignites again with the mentioned Strayhorn piece, marked by exemplary orchestration (and vocal interpretation) featuring successive sections that blend classical climates, free fragments, elegant backdrops, excellent solos, and unusual quotations (like the closing echo of "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat"). Luxurious collective passages and an intimate, yet intense, vocal interpretation permeate "Rocketeer," which concludes the journey. A pleasure that grows with each listen, not to be missed.
Album of the week.
(Angelo Leonardi, All About Jazz)
It started off on a tinkling piano one day and morphed into a musical explosion the next. The project came out of lots of conversations between me and arranger/composer Louk Boudesteijn and I of “how ARE we gonna we do this?”. We wanted musical warriors and every person in this group is a beast. So when we didn’t have a project title for the project, we realized on day 1 of rehearsal it could ONLY be The Rocketeers.
It’s a little mad, layered and super rich. It was recorded live. But my soul is soothed by the end. It’s a jazz orchestra. Or a Big Band. Or none of those two things but inspired by everything from them. I want to be a part of moving that genre forward. I sing in a lot of jazz orchestras in Europe and well, I wanted my own - simply put! This was no easy task. You can’t just lightly toss a project like this together like a summer salad. It took months and months of dozens of highly caffeinated conversations and arranging. It’s different than anything I’ve ever done and as an artist trying to align with her soul in today’s world. This felt like that path. Out on GroundUP Music. Listen all digital stores Buy CD/vinyl.
THE NEW ALBUM IS OUT
LISTEN, SUPPORT, BUY
My new song City Girls out! It’s my homage to growing up in city from the point of view of a woman passing the torch to a younger generation of girls finding their path. Where the sandboxes and subways shape you, and every street corner has something to teach you.
My new song Lady in Waiting is out. I’ve waited. Most of us have waited. For life to begin or re-begin. For drops of illumination, clarity, change, freedom. I didn’t think this song was about me while writing it. It was about the women I’ve watched at a distance on the NYC subway or the streets of Nairobi. I am sometimes paralyzed with empathy or love and want to hold their hands and just hang out. My friend David Garza brought this idea to me. He said, “you are all of these women. They guide you, us, everyone.” The song wrote itself as I deep dived into where I’d been in this world and what I absorbed without even knowing it.
The 2nd single Clenched Fists from my forthcoming album Stories From The Dust is out. It is the story of 4 different women’s newly sought out lives. Each story represents their fight for independence or freedom. Clutching a steering wheel, a suitcase or a microphone, their two Clenched Fists sing the narrative to tell their stories.
FRAY the story: A visual deep dive into the delicate thread that holds love together, and how that same thread which bonds us can also be the source of our unraveling.
This is a film based on the story of an “unraveling” set in the landscape of music and lyrics written by Lucy Woodward & David Garza, in a song that was recorded at Sonic Ranch at the border of Texas and Mexico. The story opens up a conversation between the head and the heart, the heart being the wiser of the two. We witness the dialogue and dance unfold, as the head speaks in threads of ice blue, and the heart in threads of fiery orange.
It features Lucy dancing and entangled in thread, along with two dancers who have their own conversation with the thread as they are wrapped in a sweater made-for-two. The sweater is the centerpiece of the film, as it represents the heart and was designed and knitted to be “pulled” and unraveled in one take. It was directed, conceptualized and choreographed by Caroline Le Duc, who is also featured as one of the main dancers of the film. It also features renowned dancer and movement artist, Baptista Kawa who is a performing artist in Jacob Jonas The Company.
As Lucy attempts to wrap up and pack the different pieces of herself and a complicated love into boxes, she gets tangled in the truth, that love remains complexly intertwined … even when it’s unraveled. She observes the two dancers, that are moving in and out of connection, within the sweater made of the thread that binds them. Lucy not only observes the dancers and witnesses her own unraveling reflected in theirs, but more profoundly, she is the one pulling the thread.
The 1st single Fray off my forthcoming album Stories From The Dust is out! So many stories to share. The unraveling begins. Album out April 5, 2024.
My first release since the pandemic. Have been wanting to share this for so long. I have a bunch of music I am going to be releasing this year and next but needed to get this baby out there FIRST! Big Bones is my mini-anthem about the body I was born into and the things that kept me together. Literally.
Photo by Nick Suttle / Design by Tuesday McKay
I HAD A WILD YEAR. I sang at the Tunisia Opera House and learned how to bargain with locals at the rug market. I also learned quickly that I was not particularly good at this. Vendors were quite aware of this, too and probably pitied me. Started a crazy, wild and beautiful Big Band in Europe, my 2023 adventure, where vocally I am the most colorful and expressive I have ever been. The US Embassy brought me in to work with young, devoted singers in cities such as beautiful Athens (this is really the way to learn about a culture). I sang in Romania (above photo) with 103°F fever (had Covid and didn't know it) but as Bette and Judy say, the show must go on (watch soundcheck in Romania!). Can't summarize the following quickly but: I volunteered at the Poland/Ukraine border cooking food for refugees when the war started last April. This journey was one that stuck with me the longest; still does. I think I experienced PTSD in the weeks that followed and it certainly changed my perspective on just about everything. I learned about bravery, the human spirit and how to make bread pudding for 1000 people (can’t even make bread pudding for 1). I kept thinking I would write about the kitchen but I felt I had to sort of go inward more than outward if that makes sense. Maybe one day.
