LiveOne
American jazz, pop and bossa nova singer Stacey Kent was born in South Orange, New Jersey, on March 27, 1965, and is known for her covers and original compositions by her husband Jim Tomlinson. After spending her childhood in France, she studied in New York and then in London, at the Guildhall School of Music, where she met saxophonist and composer Jim Tomlinson, whom she married in 1991. She sang at London's Café Bohème and Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, appeared in the film Richard III (1995) and produced her first album for Candid Records, Close Your Eyes (1997), based on covers of standards. Accompanied by Jim Tomlinson on saxophone and David Newton on piano, she expanded her repertoire to include themes from jazz, musical comedy, film and pop with the albums Love Is... The Tender Trap (1998), Let Yourself Go: Celebrating Fred Astaire (1999), Dreamsville (2000), In Love Again: The Music of Richard Rodgers (2002), The Boy Next Door (2003) and The Lyric (2006). Promoted to the rank of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in Paris in 2009, Stacey Kent sings two Serge Gainsbourg songs in French on the following album Breakfast on the Morning Tram, her first for the Blue Note label, then dedicates the opus Raconte-Moi (2010) to French chanson, on which she sings Benjamin Biolay, Michel Jonasz and Barbara. The live album Dreamer in Concert (2011), recorded at La Cigale in Paris, is followed by The Changing Lights (2013). In addition to covers of bossa nova classics featuring Brazilian guitarist Roberto Menescal, it includes tracks by Jim Tomlinson and Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japanese writer who wrote several song lyrics for her. Stacey Kent went on to record the albums Tenderly (2015) and I Know I Dream: The Orchestral Sessions (2017) for the Okeh label, followed by the EP Christmas in the Rockies (2020) and the album Songs from Other Places (2021), a duo with pianist Aika Hirahara, on her own Token Productions label. She has also collaborated with the Quatuor Ébène (2012-2014), signed a duo and live album with Brazilian singer Marcos Valle(Ao Vivo, 2014) and participated in Thomas Dutronc's album Frenchy (2019). Her fifteenth studio album, Summer Me, Winter Me (2023), includes a new selection of English and French cover versions. Two years later, Stacey Kent released the EP A Little Time for Love, preceding the album A Time for Love (2026).
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