Three years ago, 23-year-old singer Lucía was a finalist at the prestigious Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition – and the first Mexican artist to enter the contest. When it came time to select the song that she would perform in the final round, she picked a standard that reflected her musical sensibility, colored in equal parts by the beauty of jazz and the Latin American songbook.

“We played ‘What a Difference a Day Makes,’ which was popularized by Dinah Washington, but in its initial incarnation was a bolero written in Spanish by María Grever,” she says from her home in New York City. “We started it as a jazz ballad in English, then switched to Spanish and added some zapateado dancing. My mother arrived with a contingent of fellow Mexicans to cheer me on. She told me that being able to sing in Spanish while dancing was what made me different from everyone else.”

Lucía won the competition, and the fact that she did it with such a soulful, multicultural rendition of a jazz standard also marked her arrival on the music scene. “What a Difference a Day Makes” is now the opening cut of the self-titled Lucía, an exquisite debut album that showcases the luminous qualities of her voice, and her superb technique and versatility.

From her velvety reading of McCoy Tyner and Sammy Cahn’s “You Taught My Heart To Sing” and an achingly vulnerable cover of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Lacy” to a mournful “Alfonsina y el Mar” and a version of “Veracruz” that brims with Lucía’s Mexican pride, the album finds the emerging singer surrounded by a cadre of jazz virtuosos: Venezuelan pianist Edward Simon, American double-bassist Larry Grenadier, Mexican drummer Antonio Sánchez, and Puerto Rican saxophonist David Sánchez. The session was helmed by visionary producer Matt Pierson, known for his work with legends such as Brad Mehldau, Milton Nascimento and Samara Joy.