Product Description

After 10 years and 6 albums on the indie label, Candid, Stacey Kent finally releases her major label debut on Blue Note Records. A multi-award winner (2001 British Jazz Award, 2002 BBC Jazz Award Best Vocalist, etc) Stacey has built a huge fanbase for her cool, classy interpretations of the Great American Songbook, all recorded with husband, arranger, producer and now songwriter Jim Tomlinson (himself a winner of the 2006 Album of the Year British Jazz Award). On "Breakfast..." Jim contributes 4 new songs written with the writer Kazuo Ishiguro - one of a legion of fans that Stacey has attracted over the years (they met after he played one of her songs on Desert Island Discs!!) and this is the first time that they have featured their own songs on an album. Stacey tours constantly - she even turned down an appearance on Parkinson because she was playing a gig (admittedly this would have been her second performance on Parkinson, which in itself is quite unique) - and has built up a very sizeable fanbase which will be determined to get the album as soon as possible. However, since Stacey is out of the UK through September we will be focusing our promotion and marketing push at the start of October as a preview to the forthcoming residency at Ronnie Scotts in November 1st - 3rd. Stacey will be available for press and promotion in late September/early October and we fully expect to find her on some major shows. In the past, her appearances on shows such as Parkinson, CBS Sunday Morning in the USA and even Swedish tv have driven an immediate and impressive sales response pushing her to number 1 and 2 in the Amazon.com charts as an example. As well as the Ronnie Scott dates in November Stacey will play a significant number of dates in the UK both this year. See below for information.

More from Stacey Kent

The Boy Next Door	In Love Again - The Music of Richard Rodgers	Close Your Eyes
Love Is...The Tender Trap	Dreamsville	Let Yourself Go: Celebrating Fred Astaire
Collection	Collection II	The Lyric

Track Listing

1. The Ice Hotel
2. Landslide
3. Ces Petits Riens
4. I Wish I Could Go Travelling Again
5. So Many Stars
6. Samba Saravah
7. Breakfast On the Morning Tram
8. Never Let Me Go
9. So Romantic
10. Hard Hearted Hannah
11. La Saison Des Pluies
12. What a Wonderful World

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7525 in Music
• Released on: 2007-10-02
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
After 10 years and 6 albums on the indie label, Candid, Stacey Kent finally releases her major label debut on Blue Note Records. A multi-award winner (2001 British Jazz Award, 2002 BBC Jazz Award Best Vocalist, etc) Stacey has built a huge fanbase for her cool, classy interpretations of the Great American Songbook, all recorded with husband, arranger, producer and now songwriter Jim Tomlinson (himself a winner of the 2006 Album of the Year British Jazz Award). On "Breakfast..." Jim contributes 4 new songs written with the writer Kazuo Ishiguro - one of a legion of fans that Stacey has attracted over the years (they met after he played one of her songs on Desert Island Discs!!) and this is the first time that they have featured their own songs on an album. Stacey tours constantly - she even turned down an appearance on Parkinson because she was playing a gig (admittedly this would have been her second performance on Parkinson, which in itself is quite unique) - and has built up a very sizeable fanbase which will be determined to get the album as soon as possible. However, since Stacey is out of the UK through September we will be focusing our promotion and marketing push at the start of October as a preview to the forthcoming residency at Ronnie Scotts in November 1st - 3rd. Stacey will be available for press and promotion in late September/early October and we fully expect to find her on some major shows. In the past, her appearances on shows such as Parkinson, CBS Sunday Morning in the USA and even Swedish tv have driven an immediate and impressive sales response pushing her to number 1 and 2 in the Amazon.com charts as an example. As well as the Ronnie Scott dates in November Stacey will play a significant number of dates in the UK both this year. See below for information.

Customer Reviews

She delivers with elegance..
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

Another smooth success for Stacey
Stacey Kent's "Breakfast on the Morning Tram" sounds like an audio journal from a global traveler: slightly world-weary but still enthusiastic, still hoping for ... ? Her trademark lyrical clarity combined with confident, understated yet adventuresome musical phrasing makes her singing a delight. For this CD she has moved beyond the American songbook and standards that make up many of her prior recordings. The songs and sound are fresh. Several songs, with lyrics by Japanese novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, ignore "songbook-style" rhymes for a more modern storytelling mode -- still catchy -- beautifully delivered by Stacey Kent's incomparable voice. This a a GREAT CD -- perhaps her best so far. My wish? Combine Ishiguro lyrics with more Brazilian-influenced melodies (Jobim? Gilberto? Tomlinson?) for a whole "Stacey Goes South" CD of updated samba and bossanova tunes. My other wish? Just where is that morning tram that serves breakfast?

Unique and wonderful
If you like Karyn Allison and Blossom Deary, don't miss this album! Stacey Kent's small but intimate voice seems to whisper in your ear. She really is unique. But its not just Ms. Kent which makes this CD a winner; the arrangements are perfect and the musicians (including her husband, Jim Tomlinson) back her with an unselfish sensitivity. Yet, when they come forward to solo, you are aware that each is a polished and creative performer! More! Please!
I save the best for last.
The new songs written by Kazuo Ishiguro and Jim Tomlinson are very special. They are not just the same old love songs. Yes, each one includes love as a component, but, with a humorous "twist". Artists create many mediocre pieces on the way to that ONE masterpiece, but to write FOUR superb songs for this album, is a creative blessing.
Turn down the lights; sit back; enjoy!