Search - Stacey Kent :: Breakfast on the Morning Tram

She delivers with elegance..

Pedder | New York, NY | 04/16/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"She may be not as popular as in U.K (where they consider her a British possession ), but the American-born singer always delivers with style.

A recent addition to the Blue Note roster of recording artists, now Stacey Kent boasts in U.K. six best-selling albums, a string of awards, including the 2001 British Jazz Award and 2002 BBC Jazz Award "Best Vocalist", the 2004 Backstage Bistro Award and the 2006 Album of the Year for The Lyric featuring Stacey Kent as well as a fan base that enables her to sell out concert halls around the world.

Her latest album "Breakfast On a Morning Tram" includes a mixture of classic standards as well as new songs written and produced by her husband and saxophonist, Jim Tomlinson, and has on her team a surprise star writer (award-winning novelist) Kazuo Ishiguro, who supplies four angular lyrics on her Blue Note debut.

"She conveys the sense of a person talking to herself". Ishiguro wrote, "the faltering hesitancies, the exuberant rushes of inner thought".

It probably would have been easy for the expat American to continue ploughing a comfortable swing-revivalist furrow.

For the past 10 years, she has been mainly singing numbers form the great American Songbooks. However, on this CD, she sings lesser known beautiful songs (a folksily soulful "Landslide" - from Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks), a couple of Serge Gainsbourg romances delivered in French ( "Ces petits riens" and "La saison des Pluies"') , another pearl of a song, the elegant bossa nova "Samba Savarah", also delicately sung in French and three numbers from the Songbook, a bluesily swinging "Hard Hearted Hannah", "Never let me go" and and an account of "What a Wonderful World" as a wondering whisper.

She did sing Bacharach, Paul Simon and Carole Kind in her previous exquisite album The Boy Next Door , but this CD has a fresher approach.

Full marks to her, then, for having the courage to take this new departure, a collection of songs that occasionally tilts in the direction of Norah Jones, another artist who has made the most of a narrow vocal range.

Kent's light, girlish voice and avoidance of dynamic or emotional extremes is applied here to a wider range of material than the Broadway standards that made her name.

Kent can get a hard time from the cognoscenti for her dinner-jazzy Latin shuffles and faintly coy delivery, and there are certainly times on her albums where you wish John Zorn might crash in.

But the shift from dark, low sounds to edgier ascending pleas is genuinely affecting on "Never Let Me Go". John Parricelli's guitar is a delight, and Jim Tomlinson's soft sax is as supportive as ever; and Kent's timing and care with lyrics shows how much she cares about this fragile world of almost-jazz.

Stacey sounds understandably self-conscious on some of the modern material, but the lissom guitar-based arrangements leave you eager to hear where the next step will take her.

"Her voice is sometimes a whisper, sometimes a confiding murmur, sometimes an exhilarated exclamation; but whatever the idiom or the mood, individual listeners frequently feel that Stacey's music was intended for their ears only". - John Fordham"

Stacey Kent Enjoys Her Growth

Stephanie DePue | Carolina Beach, NC USA | 10/29/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"British-American singer Stacey Kent's new album, "Breakfast On The Morning Tram," shows the youthful jazz chanteuse with the sweet, yet strong voice, to be enjoying unprecedented growth in her career. She's put together a bigger band, with a number of talented musicians, and she's allowed them lots of room to stretch on this disk. She has also, for the first time, recorded original compositions: this album has only three songs from the Great American Songbook, on which she had so successfully relied until now. She has also moved on from her first recording label, the small independent Candid, to the prestigious jazzy Blue Note.



Kent, who was born in South Orange, New Jersey, met her talented husband, saxophonist, now producer/arranger/composer, Jim Tomlinson, with whom she works, while both were students at London's 125 year old Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The singer, whose clear voice and delivery lie somewhere between the flirtatious sound of Norah Jones, and the ever-popular smoky barroom sound now delivered by Diana Krall and Claire Martin, among others, was initially championed by British critic and jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton. She credits Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, Nancy Wilson, and Cannonball Adderley as the biggest influences on her work. She has won the 2001 British Jazz Award, and the 2002 British Broadcasting Corporation Jazz Award for Best Vocalist. She has a large, devoted following that should be pleased by her newest release.



"Breakfast" gives more than a nod to France, where Kent did post-graduate work, and is exceedingly popular: she was, in fact, signed by the Paris office of Blue Note. The French gave the 2006 "Boy Next Door" Gold Album status within six months of its release. They've greeted "Breakfast" by giving it, within six weeks of its release, Top #20 status on the general charts, and Top #10 status on the jazz charts; they've also given it an enthusiastic sell-out audience at Paris's legendary Olympia Music Hall. The new album includes two songs Kent identifies as her personal favorites from the works of the French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, "Ces Petits Riens," and "La Saison des Pluies." It also includes a cover of that rhythmic tune from "Un Homme et Une Femme," (that'll be "A Man and A Woman," to us), "Samba Saravah," by Pierre Barouh.



"So Many Stars" is another lilting samba on this Latin-tinged record, music by the Brazilian Sergio Mendes, words by the American powerhouse duo Marilyn and Alan Bergman. In addition, Kent covers "Landslide," by Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac, in tribute to the Colorado Rockies, where she and Tomlinson enjoy spending their down time. "Never Let Me Go," "Hard Hearted Hannah," and "Wonderful World" are from the Great American Songbook that's served the singer so well.



Finally, "Breakfast" boasts four unusual, outstanding new compositions, all with lyrics by British Booker Prize winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote the liner notes for the 2003 release "In Love Again," and music by Tomlinson, with whose saxophone Kent sings in delicious close harmony. These songs, the Latin-grooving "Ice Hotel," the title song, "I Wish I Could Go Travelling Again," and "So Romantic," allow Kent's whispering voice to suggest, as Ishiguro has noted, almost a private, inner conversation, with its hesitations and asides, that remains close to the rhythms, inflections, and informalities of everyday speech. But then, so many of her listeners feel that Kent is singing for them alone, telling a wistful story, as she likes to do. Famous jazz lover Clint Eastwood asked her to perform at his 70th birthday party. Most of us can't quite afford that, unfortunately, but I've been lucky enough to catch her a few times in her month-long stands at New York's esteemed Algonquin Hotel: and, yes, she's also played Carnegie Hall. You want to catch her if you can.







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This dynamic duo has done it again!

tunisianswife | Cincinnati, OH USA | 10/08/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"After waiting with wild anticipation for this release, I have to say that I was not disappointed. I really enjoy the wide range of songs on this release; it is refreshing to hear some original songs as well as a few standards. Ms. Kent's amazing voice has never been better. After listening to it, I fall in love with these songs more and more. Mr. Ishiguro's contributions make "Ice Hotel" such a great song. (the more I listen to it, the more I understand the deeper meaning of it). I agree that Ms. Kent seems so at ease on this release. Her arrangement of "Landslide" sounds better than the original. I just love the variety of French and English. My only regret is that there were not more solos of Mr. Tomlinson's, as I really enjoy his sax playing. Just a sweet, sweet release that will surprise many with the originals. I just hope we don't have to wait long for her next release. I can never get enough. BRAVO to Ms. Kent and Mr. Tomlinson."