LUCY WOODWARD was born in London and lived in Amsterdam til she was 5. She moved to New York with her mother who was a musicologist-opera singer-belly dancer-school teacher and spent her summers in The Netherlands with her composer-conductor father. She went to public high school in The Bronx but was accepted early at age 16 to Manhattan School of Music, dropping out after one year when she realized she loved bebop but didn’t sing it. She started waitressing, singing jazz and blues standards for tips in NYC coffee shops, working in cover bands and singing on tv commercials. Lucy began writing songs, honing a new skill she didn’t know she had, and eventually signed her first record deal with Atlantic Records in 2003. She had 2 Top 40 pop hits, went to Japan for the first time and performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
But she left the pop world as fast as she came in leading her to release 3 more studio solo albums: Til They Bang On The Door (Ground UP Music 2016), Hooked! (Verve Records 2010) and indie Lucy Woodward is…Hot & Bothered(Barnes & Noble 2008) – all albums rooted in blues, soul, jazz and pop which was quite the opposite of the world she had been living in just a few years prior. In 2011, Lucy was asked to fill in last minute for the lead singer of Pink Martini having to learn material in Turkish, Croatian, Japanese, Spanish and French with 6 days notice, performing at festivals including Montreal Jazz Fest, Ravinia and 3 concerts with the San Francisco Symphony. She recorded the 1.3+ million viewed song “Too Hot To Last” with Snarky Puppy which is featured on their Grammy-winning Family Dinner album and has toured opening for them internationally on and off since 2011. She performed with the WDR Big Band in Cologne, Germany and continues to sing her Big Band material in Europe and the US. She has sung background vocals with legendary artists including Rod Stewart, Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, Joe Cocker and Chaka Khan and has contributed her vocals and songs to countless soundtracks including the Big Band Bjork smash “It’s Oh So Quiet” from the Disney movie Ice Princess and Birds of Prey. Lucy’s fifth album Music! Music! Music! is the debut collaboration with legendary guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter. They tour extensively in the US and Europe and will be releasing their 2nd album together in late 2020. She is now working on a show inspired by the music of Peggy Lee, who would’ve been 100 years old this year. Lucy travels back and forth to NY and LA but resides in Rotterdam most of the year where she is now learning to speak Dutch again which funnily enough, was her first language.