Carmen Lundy performs songs from her new album, ‘Changes,’ at Jazz Standard shows

Multitalented singer’s latest work has reached No. 5 on the charts

By Greg Thomas / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, March 8, 2012, 8:00 AM

Carmen Lundy is one of those rare performers who does it all: She sings, plays multiple instruments, and now she’s even designed her album cover.

Opening Thursday night at the Jazz Standard through Sunday, Lundy and her ensemble will play selections from her recently released “Changes.”

Except for one song — “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” — Lundy penned all of the tunes on her latest project, now No. 5 on the JazzWeek radio charts. She composed several numbers on guitar, a new instrument among the many she plays.

And Lundy also created the cover image, a golden visage of the ancient Egyptian king Akhenaten surrounded by multicolored tiles that spread out like rays of light extending from the sun.

“It has to do with the sun within the individual, that radiates from the soul, that’s the spirit of everything we know,” says Lundy, sounding like a spiritual guru. “So then it becomes a spiritual illumination of the soul, of the spirit, of the sounds from the person that we call music. People make music.”

The people making music with Lundy through Sunday at the Jazz Standard are bassist Kenny Davis, pianist Anthony Wonsey, drummer Jamison Ross and guitarist Lage Lund.

The Miami native has been composing songs since her early 20s.

“Alongside learning how to sing all the great standards through master teachers like Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, I felt that I needed to bring the world songs that didn’t exist before me that I could be associated with, as they did.”

The eldest of seven children, Lundy got an early start in Florida, taking piano lessons at age 6, and watching her mother sing with the gospel group the Apostolic Singers. She’s a graduate of the University of Miami, with a degree in studio music and jazz.

Lundy moved to the upper East Side in 1978, and began making a mark right away in venues such as Jazzmania, Mikell’s and Sweet Basil.

But the 30-year-plus veteran emphasizes that her career began back home.

“I sang in Miami for a good seven years before coming to New York, alongside Jaco Pastorius, Ira Sullivan and Bruce Hornsby,” she says. “I met alto saxophonist Bobby Watson in Miami. My brother [bassist\] Curtis Lundy, Bobby and I used to play in the same joints for years, six nights a week, and get up and go to school the next day. Two of my classmates were Hiram Bullock and Pat Metheny.”

Yet from her arrival in the Big Apple to moving to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, Lundy says she “sang her way through New York,” playing with peers and living legends. Carmen McRae even gave her the thumbs-up at a time when young jazz singers on the scene seemed few and far between.

“Changes” is Lundy’s 12th recording as a leader. She says the title came from her 23-year-old drummer praising the chord changes of the songs. Yet there are more than musical meanings.