American jazz singer Stacey Kent, who appears tonight at Taipei’s National Concert Hall, says she had an unforgettable time when she played here four years ago.
“It was one of the most electrifying, emotional, beautiful nights, ever,” she said on the phone with the Taipei Times from her home in London.
Her audience in 2005 must have felt the same way and spread the word, because her show tonight was already sold out last month.
Kent’s unconventional rise to international jazz stardom has all the charm and romance of a Hollywood script, as her press kit suggests. She was a graduate student in Europe, working towards her master’s degree in comparative literature, with no ambitions to become a professional singer. But a chance meeting in Oxford with British saxophonist Jim Tomlinson turned into a love affair, which blossomed into a marriage and musical collaboration. Now she and Tomlinson record for Blue Note Records and tour internationally.
She enjoys the praise of a wide range of luminaries, from Oscar-winning songwriter Jay Livingston (co-author of the Christmas tune Silver Bells) to Clint Eastwood, who invited her to sing at his 70th birthday party, and even Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.
One notable admirer, British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, has even become a collaborator. He wrote the lyrics to four songs on Kent’s 2007 album Breakfast on the Morning Tram, which earned a Grammy nomination for best jazz vocalist and hit platinum in France, where she is immensely popular (the Ishiguro-penned track, The Ice Hotel, is well worth checking out on Kent’s MySpace page).
The album, which is Kent’s most personal and ambitious work to date, showcases her delicate, yet sophisticated voice. Her crisp diction and near-conversational style of singing show a strong folk music sensibility.
“I think that what I do as a singer, which is such a communicative thing to do, to share a story — has everything to do my early days as a literature student and even as a grammar student,” she said.
Kent’s somewhat unconventional path to jazz has also shaped her repertoire. She draws from the Great American Songbook like most jazz vocalists, but also performs songs by rock artists like Paul Simon (Bookends) and Stevie Nicks (Landslide).
Storytelling “comes naturally” to Kent. “I want people to come on a journey with me ... It can be any genre as long as the story is conveyed to me, because I’m not only a singer, I’m also a listener and lover of music,” she said.
Kent, who is fluent in French, has been preparing to record an album of all French songs, due for release next year. She says the album will be the realization of a lifelong dream as she grew up with a Francophone grandfather who made her memorize Baudelaire and Rimbaud “even before I knew what they meant.”
“Poetry is so important to me. It’s one of my reasons for being on the planet,” she said.
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