Stacey Kent

BAND FILE: STACEY KENT QUINTET/SEXTET - November 9
 
In BAND FILE, Jazz Rag takes a look at the career of a multi-lingual academic who dropped off the campus carousel and into a tale of instant stardom with more than a touch of the "Let's do the show right here" Hollywood musical about it.

Only three years later, the reputation of STACEY KENT is already firmly established on both sides of the Atlantic.

Perhaps two markers, one in the UK, the other in the States, will indicate Stacey's current success. Nobody could claim that there is a shortage of excellent and popular British jazz singers at the moment, and yet Stacey Kent scooped the BT British Jazz Award this year, despite the fact that she is hardly the archetypal jazz singer.

As she herself says, "Jazz singer, swing singer, singer of great songs, I don't mind what term people use, my main joy is simply to sing the songs." -- of which more later.

As for the States, a major breakthrough came early this year. CBS Sunday Morning, a news and arts show, presented a documentary feature on Stacey, with film of her in action, interviews with herself, Humphrey Lyttelton and others.

There being an element of romance in the story (Stacey having met, fallen in love with and married saxophonist Jim Tomlinson as students at the Guildhall), the show went out on February 14th. The results: thousands of copies of Stacey's CD, The Tender Trap, sold in the States, appearances in the Billboard and Internet charts and masses of enthusiastic e-mails from new fans.

"The important thing," Stacey explains, "is that CBS introduced me to a non-jazz world. People write to me from the USA saying they don't really know what my music is called, but they like it, it's so accessible." So how did Stacey's career start?

If it all seems like chance and serendipity, that's how it was, though she readily concedes that exposure to music from an early age in her New York upbringing had steeped her in jazz and popular song to such an extent that she knew more than she knew she knew.

Favourite singers included Doris Day and Fred Astaire, but she was equally at home singing Paul Gonsalves tenor solos from the Ellington band. "It was a musical household and my mother was a great one for oral communication, telling stories, and this is where it all fits together. I particularly loved Fred Astaire for his ability to tell a story and that's what I want to do in my performances."

The first step in the conversion from Stacey Kent, academic, to Stacey Kent, jazz singer, occurred in the early 1990s. Already fluent in French and Italian, she headed for Munich to improve her German - with a half-complete Master's Degree in Comparative Literature. In her own phrase, "overdosed on academia," she visited friends in England, and, on an impulse, auditioned for a course at the Guildhall School of Music ... and then one thing led to another. "The course was a one-year Postgraduate Music course, aimed at those with music degrees, which mine wasn't.

However, they accepted me. At first, it was very daunting because I didn't have the formal musical background of the others. It was then that I realised that I had assimilated more than I had realised. I lacked the technical vocabulary to talk about things like chord progressions, so the other students were surprised that I could sing through Gonsalves solos, but it seemed natural."

It was also at the Guildhall that the current Stacey Kent Sextet starting assembling itself. JIM TOMLINSON, a Philosophy graduate, was another without a Music degree, so their meeting was doubly lucky! Also on the course was guitarist COLIN OXLEY and the three came together musically at the same time as Stacey and Jim came together romantically. "We found we shared ideas musically, so we used to appear as a trio at parties and so forth."

There is an echo of the student trio in the fact that, among various combinations of the five musicians who regularly work with Stacey Kent, it is not uncommon for the band to go out without a drummer, anchored by Colin's guitar.

Stacey is convinced that, if she had not met Jim at the Guildhall, she would have never pursued a career as a jazz singer. " I would have followed a career as an academic, though I think that the two parallel each other. I have always had a talent for languages and study was to some extent an ear game.
I used to find different languages fun to study and now my work still depends on telling stories."

The opportunity to sing the Ian Mckellen film of Richard III came about almost by accident and, as the tale is told, seems pure chance.

Of course, there is more to it than that: the fact that Stacey had been singing for some time in a 30's style big band at the Ritz (Jim Tomlinson on lead alto) obviously made her a candidate for the part of the singer. However, the scene itself almost never happened. "The film was to begin where the tank bursts through the wall, but later on, they decided to add a scene establishing character. The idea was to have a ballroom scene with a big band playing and pan round the various characters, then they added a singer. Richard Cook of Polygram recommended me to Trevor Jones, who was the Musical Director of the film and I auditioned for him and then went down to Brighton to audition to Richard Loncraine, the Director. He liked my face, Trevor wrote a 30's pastiche based on a Marlowe sonnet and two weeks later, we recorded the scene."

In truth, of course, the overnight success did not just 'happen' to her, as Stacey rather likes to suggest. She is quite capable of acting as her own Fairy Godmother and, once set on a musical career, has displayed enough get-up-and-go to have terrorised the faculty on some upstate campus. In this case, in 1996, she had sent a demo to all the right people and two, in particular, paid off: Humph, who played it on his Radio 2 Programme and Richard Cook who made the initial contact for Richard III. For all that, it was a pretty remarkable breakthrough and Stacey still has no idea whether any other singers were auditioned for the role.

The story after that becomes a straightforward one of growing success. Two highly successful Candid albums, Close Your Eyes (1997) and The Tender Trap (1998) have been followed by the recently released Fred Astaire tribute, Let Yourself Go, which Jim and Stacey have been produced for Candid, and by a new Jim Tomlinson album, Only Trust Your Heart, on which Stacey guests. The band gradually settled to a stable personnel. "A few years ago, I used to listen to DAVE NEWTON a lot, he's such a fantastic player. So, I was delighted to work with him and gradually we've added STEVE BROWN and then SIMON THORPE as regulars.
Obviously, we work with other people and it's wonderful to work with some of the great players around, but it's good to come back to a group which has such an understanding and gels so well together. The band shifts in size, sometimes leaving out guitar or drums, but we know each other so well that it makes no difference."

However, with Stacey Kent, the conversation always comes back to the repertoire. "I don't really know how to describe myself, but a singer of the Great American Songbook would be as good as anything. The difficulty with the Astaire album was that there was so much material we had to leave out, the repertoire is so enormous. We only had two days in the studio, so we didn't want to record material we wouldn't use, but at least we can perform the songs we justifed out in concert. We have just done an Astaire show at the Purcell Room and had a chance to do the wonderful songs like No Strings, that aren't on the album.

Stacey talks enthusiastically about carrying on doing what she is doing and enjoying so much, but she is clearly focused on celebrating the Millennium by conquering America. Currently, she spends much time in transit across the Atlantic, with the relaunch of Close Your Eyes a priority and a gig at Birdland scheduled for November.

The first CD had already made an impact in the States the first time around, but with the success of The Tender Trap and a change of distributor, it was re-released in October. February/March is the key time, with both Only Trust Your Heart and Let Yourself Go to be released. Spring in New York is already penciled in. Meanwhile, there's a Scandinavian tour in November and "plenty more of the same" to look forward to ... and a bit more television exposure wouldn't come amiss!