- Album list
- Singer Intro
Stacey Kent is an American jazz singer. She is married to saxophonist Jim Tomlinson.
Stacey Kent is a Grammy nominated, Platinum-selling American jazz singer and recording artist. Kent was born in South Orange, New Jersey and attended Newark Academy in Livingston, New Jersey. Her paternal grandfather was Russian who grew up in France. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. She travelled to England after graduation to study music at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where she met saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married on August 9, 1991.
In the 1990s, she began her professional career singing regularly at Café Boheme in London's Soho. After two or three years, she began opening for established acts at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London. Her first album, Close Your Eyes, was released in 1997.
Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the liner notes to Kent's 2003 album, In Love Again. Ishiguro first 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 and Kent subsequently asked Tomlinson and Ishiguro to write 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 realisation 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 first of their songs, 'The Ice Hotel', won first prize in the International Songwriting Competition in April 2008. Tomlinson and Ishiguro continue to collaborate for Kent and she has recorded several more Tomlinson/Ishiguro songs on Dreamer in Concert, The Changing Lights and I Know I Dream.
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.
In 2009, Stacey was awarded the Chevalier Dans L'Ordre Des Arts et Des Lettres. (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Minister of Culture, Minister Christine Albanel. Culture Minister Albanel cited Kent “ as a painter of sentiment, spellbinding, mixing sophistication and sentiment, a luminous and unique talent ”. Previous recipients include Rudolf Nureyev, Philip Glass, and Yohji Yamamoto.
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 once again, collaborating with her songwriting team, Tomlinson/Ishiguro. In 2014, Stacey left Warner Records and signed to Sony. In 2014, she released her first album on Sony, Tenderly, an album of standards featuring Brazilian guitarist and one of the fathers of Bossa Nova, Roberto Menescal. Stacey met Menescal in Brazil in 2011, at the 80th Birthday celebration of O Cristo Redentor, the statue on Corcovado. They discovered that each was a fan of the other's work and decided to collaborate on an album of all standards, inspired by Menescal's love of the Julie London / Barney Kessel duo.
In 2014, Stacey was invited by Brazilian composer, Marcos Valle, to record and tour in celebration of Marcos' 50 years of his career. Together they recorded an album live in Rio, called Ao Vivo, and a DVD live from Birdland, New York City and Blue Note, Tokyo.
In 2017, Stacey recorded her next album for Sony, I Know I Dream: The Orchestral Sessions, her first album with orchestra, comprising 58 musicians, arrangements by Tommy Laurence, covering music from The Great American Songbook, French Chansons, songs from Edu Lobo and Antonio Carlos Jobim from Brazil, and further original songs from Jim Tomlinson with Ishiguro, Ladeira and his most recent songwriting partner, Cliff Goldmacher, from Nashville. Tomlinson/Goldmacher provide the title track.
Kent appeared in Ian McKellen's 1995 film version of Richard III, singing a jazz version of Christopher Marlowe's poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.
Jean-Claude Ellena, the French perfumer or 'nose,' who has been Hermès's exclusive in-house perfumer since 2004, cites Stacey Kent as one of his inspirations. In an excerpt from the book, LA SEDUCTION, by Elaine Sciolino: 'Ellena is said to be the most articulate perfumer in the world, capable of translating the scents he creates into poetry... It is this talent that sets him apart. He professes to draw inspiration from literary figures like Beaudelaire, composers like Debussy, painters like Cezanne and jazz singers like Stacey Kent. He spins his impressions into creations that trigger memories and fantasies.'
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