Lucy Yeghiazaryan: Hey Love!

The excellent New York-based singer Lucy Yeghiazaryan and her stellar band may have you thinking back to Carmen McRae in the 1950s as you listen to Hey Love!—groups with Wendell Marshall, Kenny Clarke, and other hard bop-era musicians. On her 2026 release, Yeghiazaryan has the ubiquitous Peter Washington on bass and Kenny Washington on drums, with Tardo Hammer at the piano, Grant Stewart on tenor saxophone, and Bruce Harris on trumpet. Johnny O'Neal sings with her at the piano on "Dedicated to You," the tender closer.

The set list is straight-ahead Great American Songbook: tunes by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh ("Witchcraft"); Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Mercer ("I Thought About You"); Van Heusen with Sammy Cahn ("Come Dance with Me"); Jimmy Davis, Ram Ramirez and James Sherman ("Lover Man"); Richard Rodgers ("Loads of Love"); and their ilk.

An elegant and expert offering, Hey Love! makes it easy to see why audiences in New York have been receiving her well since she arrived on the scene in 2015. Her vocal style here is reminiscent of McRae's straightforward alto: hard-swinging and hip in a no-nonsense way. Yeghiazaryan does not shy away from scat, but neither does she shoot for the moon.

As good as it is, this recording does not give a full sense of her considerable range, what she can do with repertoire that is a bit more off-the-beaten-path. For that, listen to some of her more adventurous earlier releases, like In Her Words with singer-composer Vanisha Gould (La Reserve Records, 2021), a program of original material full of emotional and tonal nuance. Or Beside the Golden Door (La Reserve, 2024), a gorgeous album in which she digs into her cultural heritage, presenting selections from Armenian songbooks back-to-back with those from the Great American Songbook.

While Hey Love! offers little in the way of new terrain (there is no law that it must), it is—as the title suggests—a lovely album, beautifully performed by all, with nice arrangements by Yeghiazaryan and Stewart. Discophiles will take note that it was recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio in Englewood, engineered by Maureen Sickler.