Stacey Kent

Stacey Kent (born March 27, 1965) is an American jazz singer from South Orange, New Jersey.

Kent was nominated for a Grammy Award and was awarded the Chevalier de l' Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Minister of Culture in 2009. She is married to saxophonist, composer Jim Tomlinson, who produces Kent's albums and writes songs for her with his lyricist partner, novelist Kazuo Ishiguro.

Early life and education

Stacey Kent was born in South Orange, New Jersey. Her paternal grandfather was Russian and grew up in France. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, she traveled to England to study music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where she met saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married on August 9, 1991.

Career

In the 1990s, she began her professional career singing at Café Bohème in London's Soho. After two or three years, she began opening for established acts at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London. In 1995, she appeared in Richard Loncraine's film '' Richard III'' (starring Ian McKellen), singing "Come Live with Me and Be My Love" (composed by Trevor Jones) at the Grand Ball celebrating the Yorkist triumph in the Wars of the Roses. Her first album, '' Close Your Eyes'', was released in 1997. (An 11-track cassette release called ''Stacey Kent Sings'' was recorded in July 1995, which may be a set of demos.)

Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the liner notes to Kent's 2003 album, ''In Love Again''. Ishiguro met Kent after he chose her recording of "They Can't Take That Away from Me" as one of his ''Desert Island Discs'' in 2002. In 2006, Tomlinson and Ishiguro began to write songs for her. Ishiguro has said of his lyric writing that "with an intimate, confiding, first-person song, the meaning must not be self-sufficient on the page. It has to be oblique, sometimes you have to read between the lines" and that this realization has had an "enormous influence" on his fiction writing.

Tomlinson and Ishiguro co-wrote four songs on the album ''Breakfast on the Morning Tram'', ''The Changing Lights'', and '' I Know I Dream: The Orchestral Sessions''.

Tomlinson and Ishiguro have subsequently written songs for three more of her albums (''Dreamer'', ''The Changing Lights'' and ''I Know I Dream'') and continue to write for her today.

Popular success

Kent's album ''The Boy Next Door'' achieved Gold album status in France in September 2006. ''Breakfast on the Morning Tram'' (2007) achieved Platinum album status in France in November 2007 and Double Gold status in Germany in February 2008. '' Raconte-moi...'' was recorded in French and achieved Gold status in both France and Germany and became the second best selling French language album worldwide in 2010.

''Dreamer In Concert'' (2011) was recorded in May, 2011, at La Cigale in Paris. The album includes three songs previously unrecorded by Kent: "Waters of March" by Antonio Carlos Jobim, "Postcard Lovers" by Jim Tomlinson with lyrics by Kazuo Ishiguro, and "O Comboio" by Portuguese poet António Ladeira.

In 2013, Kent released ''The Changing Lights'', a Brazilian-tinged album, covering bossa nova classics such as Jobim's " How Insensitive" and again collaborating with Tomlinson and Ishiguro. In 2014, she left Warner Bros. and signed with Sony. Sony released ''Tenderly'', an album of standards with Roberto Menescal, one of the founders of bossa nova. She met Menescal in Brazil in 2011 at the 80th birthday celebration of the '' Christ the Redeemer'' statue. They discovered they were fans of each other's work and collaborated on an album of standards inspired by Menescal's admiration for the duo of Julie London and Barney Kessel.

In 2014, Marcos Valle invited her to tour in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of his career. They recorded the album ''Ao Vivo'' and a DVD that was recorded live at the Birdland club in New York City and the Blue Note in Tokyo.

In 2017, Kent recorded her next album for Sony, '' I Know I Dream: The Orchestral Sessions'', her first album with an orchestra, comprising 58 musicians with arrangements by Tommy Laurence, with music from the Great American Songbook, French chansons, songs by Edu Lobo, Jobim, Tomlinson, Ishiguro, Ladeira and his songwriting partner, Cliff Goldmacher from Nashville. Tomlinson and Goldmacher wrote the title song. By 2020, the album had reached 40 million streams and

In 2020, Kent released a series of singles and EPs, including "Christmas in the Rockies", "Three Little Birds", "Lovely Day", "Landslide", "I Wish I Could Go Travelling Again", "Bonita" and "Craigie Burn" as a duet with her longtime pianist Art Hirahara. Several of these singles become part of an album released in October 2021, called "Songs From Other Places" for which Kent won 'Best Vocal Performance' at the Jazz Music Awards in Atlanta, Georgia in October 2022.

Kent has sold more than 2 million albums worldwide and over 400 million streams.

Awards and honors

* British Jazz Award, 2001
* BBC Jazz Award, Best Vocalist, 2002
* Backstage Bistro Award, 2004
* BBC Jazz Award, Album of the Year, '' The Lyric'', 2006
* Grammy Award nomination, Best Vocal Jazz Album, ''Breakfast on the Morning Tram