January 30 1999
THE NATURAL: New Yorker Stacey Kent moved to the U.K. several years ago, intending to complete a master's degree in comparative literature.Along the way, she befriended a group of music students and auditioned with them for an intensive one-year music course. To Kent's surprise, she passed the audition.Although she never did obtain her masters, Kent is anticipating the U.S. release of her second album of vocal standards. "Although I never really studied singing , I've always sang," says Kent. "There was always music in my house when I was growing up, and I suppose it was obvious that I had a certain ability." Kent notes that her childhood piano lessons inadvertently allowed her to develop as a vocalist. "I guess that I had sort of run my own ear-training course. I would hear a song or theme in a movie or on television and hurry to the piano to figure it out.I ended up with much more of a trained ear than I realized." Because Kent's music course was closely tied in with London's music scene, she quickly found herself in the unexpected position of having work offered her as a vocalist. "Suddenly, I found myself in the position of having a career as a singer, which I never expected," she says."I sang with a 14-piece big band. I sang at Ronnie Scott's Club.
I met and performed with lots of up-and-coming musicians. It all culminated in my record deal with Candid Records. At that point, of course, there was no turning back." Close Your Eyes (on Candid), Kent's debut, was one of the best-selling British jazz albums of 1997 in the U.K.Kent's latest collection of standards, The Tender Trap, released on Candid last summer in the U.K., was picked up by Chiaroscuro for U.S. release February 9. Taking its name from the Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn standard, Trap explores Kent's love of standards and highlights her uniquely evocative phrasing. Kent wraps her voice lovingly around the classic lyrics, caressing the words sublimely, revealing an intimate understanding of phrasing and delivery. "People are surprised that someone my age is so in love with standards," says the 30-year-old Kent, "but I don't even think about it.
The songs are so timeless and the stories in them are so universal, that it doesn't matter whether I'm singing them or Nat King Cole is singing them. They can be applied to my life or anyone's life." Although Kent is happily married to saxphonist Jim Tomlinson (who appears prominently on The Tender Trap), she quickly points out that the universal nature of a good song transcends the personal life of a performer. "Even when I'm singing of unrequited love, it may not reflect my life but the quality of the song allows me to deliver it truthfully,"she says, adding that "for those four or five minutes, the song becomes my story and the story of the listener."
Steve Graybow