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Lucy Kalantari has been immersed in music for as long as she can remember. What started as tunes that stuck in her head as a child (growing up in New Jersey and the Dominican Republic), transformed into writing songs for the bands she was in as a teenager. It was no surprise that Kalantari wanted to pursue a career in the industry, and in 1998, she graduated from Purchase College with a degree in studio composition. For years after, Kalantari made music aimed at an adult audience—but something wasn’t quite right.
Fast forward to 2013, the year her son Darius, now 11, was born. While embracing her new role as a mom, Kalantari—who lives with her family in Hyde Park—dove headfirst into a songwriting challenge that required her to write and record a new song every week. These tunes were often written with her newborn in mind, and by the end of the project, she had a collection of jazzy, Latin-inspired children’s music. Shortly after, Kalantari released her first album, Pockets Full of Joy, in 2014—and that was just the beginning.
Kalantari won a Grammy for Best Children’s Album in 2016 for her second album, Big Things.
“It moves me to my core to make art for our future leaders, planting seeds for their growth, and giving tools to parents for their important journeys,” Kalantari says. Her first record was followed by Big Things (2016), which earned her the Grammy for Best Children’s Album; It’s the Holidays! (2017); and All the Sounds (2018).
This year, her band, Lucy Kalantari and the Jazz Cats, released Creciendo (which translates to “growing up”), her first full-length album sung entirely in Spanish. The record, says Kalantari, “shines a bright and inquisitive light on the amazing transformation of growing up, from the inner joy and spark within children to their never-ending need to learn. It has classic jazz swing, Latin flair from my familial roots, and an exploration of sound that will feed the sweetest curiosity.” (This wasn’t her only project this year— she also wrote and produced several songs for the revival of the cartoon Dora, available to stream on Paramount+.)
Creciendo was inspired not only by Kalantari’s son—a musician in his own right who can be heard throughout the album playing cello, an instrument he picked up at just 3 years old—but also her mother, who suffers from dementia. “I’ve been wanting to make a Spanish album for kids for so long, and I felt the weight of time as my mom’s dementia was progressing. I really wanted her to be present enough to experience this new music with me, especially in her native language,” says Kalantari. On Instagram, Kalantari shares that despite her mother’s memory issues, she memorized all of the words to the track “Tu Luz,” which means “your light.”
When she’s not recording songs and playing shows with her band, Kalantari is in her element producing records for other artists, often working from her studio in Hyde Park, Joy Sound Lab. The production work she did on Joanie Leeds’ All the Ladies won her another Grammy in 2021. She also loves giving back to the community whenever possible: On top of encouraging aspiring children’s musicians to reach out to her for advice and connections, she also serves as a mentor for tech diversity group We Are Moving the Needle and GRAMMY U.
Above all, Kalantari stresses how grateful she is for the path her life and music have taken. “I’ve been making music for kids and families for just over 10 years and have never looked back.” And she doesn’t plan to. “I’m soaking in all of the colorful light and sharing it with the world.”
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