“My work experiments with time, language, tradition, and form and is dedicated to accessing humanity regardless of genre. As a collaborator, I use music as an intercultural exploration of communication, to create original works as part of community music making, and am invested in the activation of participant-led experiences.”
Lucas is a St. Louis raised, Montreal-based vocalist, guitarist, composer, educator and artist-researcher. With musical groups LADAMA and Callers she has co-composed and co-produced five albums of original music and toured internationally as an independent artist. Her voice has been described as "commanding" (NPR), "something to behold" (Pitchfork), and "hauntingly rich" (Pop Matters). Her music with Callers "absorbs...particulars to reach and heal a bigger hollowness" and has been dubbed “stark in execution, dazzling in effect” by Pitchfork.
Her work with LADAMA (2014 - 2024) has been named "a vivid montage of music of the Americas with irresistible spirit and universal appeal" on NPR’s All Things Considered, and their self-titled debut album, LADAMA, reached #1 on Amazon’s and Itunes’ Latin Charts. LADAMA’s 2018 TED talk and 2019 NPR Tiny Desk Concert have been viewed over a combined 300,000 times and their second album, OYE MUJER, premiered at VogueBrasil and was featured in NPR AltLatino. With LADAMA, Lucas has performed internationally and presented work at Lincoln Center, SF JAZZ, Monterey Jazz Festival, WOMAD (UK), Teatro Juares (Venezuela) & RecBeat (Brazil). LADAMA has been the recipient of numerous awards and held residencies at Antenna Cloudfarm, Paço do Frevo and National Sawdust.
As the co-leader of Callers (2004 - ), a project she founded with multi-instrumentalist and composer Ryan Seaton, Lucas has co-produced, and co-composed and arranged three full-length albums; Fortune, Life Of Love (Western Vinyl) and Reviver (Partisan Records), and a seven-inch split with Luaka Bop artist, Delicate Steve. They have performed in Europe and North America and at festivals such as Primavera Club and Tanned Tin Festival (Spain), BAM’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (Brooklyn), Festival de la Musica Nelle (Italy) and Hillside Fest (Canada). They have shared stages with Dirty Projectors, ESG, Patti Smith, Arto Lindsey and Tune-yards, among others, and were featured guests on the BBC as well as WNYC’s Soundcheck and Spinning On Air. For their 2012 music video for “Heroes”, their single from their 2012 full-length album, Reviver, they collaborated with Guggenheim and Doris Duke Award winning choreographer Beth Gill.
Lucas is a 2014 OneBeat Fellow, and a recipient of a NYC Women’s Fund For Media, Music and Theatre grant (with LADAMA, 2022), and Brooklyn Arts Council Grant for Community Support (2016). As a curriculum writer, facilitator and music educator she is committed to arts-integration programming in public education. She creates culturally-responsive pedagogy with a focus on music production and composition that has been implemented in NYC classrooms and across the United States. Her lessons with LADAMA and TeachRock were listed on the American Federation of Teachers's "Top Resources of 2021" list and her collaborative work with youth has been presented at the American Sociological Association as successful culturally-responsive pedagogy used in the classroom. In December of 2020, Lucas self-released Into Pink, an EP of her own compositions for voice and guitar. Joined by Craig Weinrib on drums (Henry Threadgill’s, Double Up) she produced and performed three stark, cyclical studies that weave in and out of improvisation.
She is currently a PhD student in the Individualized Program of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal where she is investigating performance and learning practices as part of community music-making.