Lucia Newell © Andrea Canter

One of the region’s premiere vocalists and jazz interpreters, Lucia Newell pays tribute to one of the legends of modern vocal jazz with a Betty Carter weekend at the Artists Quarter. She’ll be in the extraordinarily fine company of pianist Chris Lomheim, bassist Terry Burns and drummer Phil Hey.

About Lucia Newell

From Los Angeles to Mexico City to Rio de Janeiro, as well as locally at Orchestra Hall, the Artist's Quarter, and the Dakota, Lucia Newell has performed Brazilian samba, French ballads and bop melodies; she’s lent her voice to the poems of Pablo Neruda and the songs of Rogers and Hart as guest vocalist on Soul Café’s recent release (Jazz and Poetry); she has sung with the great Billy Eckstein, the Rio Jazz Orchestra, and Oscar Castro Neves. A native of Minneapolis, Lucia was always involved in school choirs, theater, and garage bands. She moved to New York in the late 60s where she finished high school and joined a classical ensemble, the Albatross Quartet, and a political theater group that ultimately settled in Minneapolis as At the Foot of the Mountain Theater. Back in the Twin Cities, Lucia began vocal studies with Janis Hardy of the Minnesota Opera. Soon her career moved into voice-over work, radio jingles and singing background vocals for recordings.

Lucia began her jazz career singing with the Kevin Hoidale Sextet and the group Four. She traveled between Minneapolis and LA singing in clubs and concerts, and cut a demo recording at Creation Audio, where she met future husband Steve Wiese. The “gypsy years” were underway as Lucia moved to Europe and then Rio de Janeiro, where she sang with Osmar Milito, Nilson Matta, Everaldo Ferreira and Marcio Lotts at Clube 21, and with Celia Vaz and the Rio Jazz Orchestra; she also studied Brazilian percussion with Café. From Rio she moved to Buenos Aires, and then to Mexico City for six months performing at El Señorial. Back in the US, Lucia landed in Los Angeles to study jazz at the Dick Grove School of Music, finally returning to Minneapolis in 1982. Back home, Lucia married Steve and worked for Jimmy Jam Harris, Terry Lewis and Monte Moir of Flyte Time, singing background vocals.

Over the past two decades, Lucia has continued voice-over work as well as live performance and studio singing, teaching, composing, and her life-long study of music. A linguist as well as vocalist, Lucia writes lyrics in both English and Portuguese, and has translated many of her favorite Brazilian songs. She has collaborated with guitarist/bassist Joan Griffith on several songs included on their CD,Enter You, Enter Love. Lucia has set words to Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty” and to works of local piano virtuoso Laura Caviani; she also has composed and written lyrics for several children’s songs and has composed music for a Hopi poem, “Weep Not at My Grave.”

Lucia Newell is busy performing locally (often at the Dakota and Artists Quarter), at area festivals, and nationally/internationally at corporate events. She’s appeared often with Soul Café, a jazz trio (Laura Caviani, Steve Blons, and Brad Holden) combining poetry and music. Her first recording, Enter You, Enter Love, was hailed as a “wonderfully surprising collection of love songs...that brings to mind steamy, moonlit tropical nights” (Sun Current). Her collaborations with Pete Whitman’s Departure Point sextet, along with her love of Billy Strayhorn, led to her 2005 release, Steeped in Strayhorn. Said Alan Bargebuhr in Cadence, “Lucia Newell turns out to be one of those gifted vocalists whose conception and intelligence is transcendent. Add to that some well crafted and conceived arrangements played with snap, crackle, and the requisite pop, and you have over an hour of music that is alive with authentic jazz affirmation.”

Betty Carter

Betty Carter

But Betty’s popularity waned in the 60s as rock became America’s popular music and as Betty spent more time concentrating on family. She formed her own record label (BetCar) in 1970 and for nearly two decades, her recordings were solely on this label. Performances on Saturday Night Live and at the Newport Jazz Festival in the late 70s rekindled interest in Betty’s music. At about this time she also found herself focusing more and more on ensuring the future of jazz by mentoring young talents. By the late 80s, she was regularly touring internationally; the New York Times praised her as “one of a very few jazz vocalists who can be counted on to approach the familiar from a totally unexpected, sometimes revelatory point of view.” In the 90s, Betty turned more to explorations of ballads and earned two Grammy nominations, while launching the Jazz Ahead program in 1993 that brought prodigious young musicians to New York. She released Feed the Fire in 1994, considered by many as her best recording; in 1997 she was awarded a President’s Medal of the Arts by Bill Clinton. Betty Carter died of pancreatic cancer in 1998; her Jazz Ahead program continues today.

The Gig

If you have not yet heard the woman described by Minnesota Monthly as “one of the most powerful vocalists on the Twin Cities scene,” this weekend show at the AQ offers a perfect opportunity. Find out why drummer Phil Hey has described Lucia as “a real jazz singer, one of the very few who’s really dedicated to what I would call jazz music - one of the few singers I would pay to see.” Join Lucia Newell and her quartet as they salute Betty Carter, May 15-16.

For more information about Lucia Newell, visit www.lucianewell.com. The Artists Quarter is located at 408 St. Peter Street in downtown St. Paul; www.artistsquarter.com

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