Published on May 9th, 2022 | by Darren Paltrowitz
0Crystal Lewis On Her New Album “Together We Can,” Songwriting, Future Artistic Plans & More
Earlier this year, GRAMMY-nominated artist Crystal Lewis made headlines with her then-new single “I Can’t Help It,” as featuring Charles Jones. A track from her forthcoming full-length album titled Together We Can, the long-awaited studio effort finally hits stores later this week on May 13, 2022. That song was produced by renowned jazz trumpeter and arranger Tony Guerrero, who produced the rest of the album, which includes collaborations with GRAMMY Award winner Tori Kelly, Kate Flannery (The Office), Arturo Sandoval, Charles Jones, Ally Brooke (Fifth Harmony), Lia Booth, and Nikki Leonti (Glee).
It has been about 3 and half decades since Crystal Lewis launched her mega-successful career as a CCM artist — scoring Billboard Top 5 albums with 1990’s Let Love In, 1996’s Beauty For Ashes, 1998’s Gold and 2000’s Fearless — and 3 years since her last jazz vocal album, Rhapsody. This new album showcases a wide range of Lewis’ pop, soul, contemporary and traditional jazz, and big band sensibilities. She had planted the seeds of her current jazz-oriented recordings with the release of her Christmas album, 2000’s Holiday!, as performed with the Peter Erskine Trio; Erksine was recently discussed in my interview with his daughter, actress and writer Maya Erksine, for The Hype Magazine.
Back in March, I had the pleasure of speaking with Crystal Lewis via Zoom, as embedded below. Beyond the Together We Can album, we talked about her creative process and her future plans as an artist. More on Lewis and Together We Can can be found online by clicking here, here and here.