Liner Notes
In Love Again
Liner note by Nobel prize-winning author, KAZUO ISHIGURO
Why listen to Stacey Kent rather than to Ella, say, or Billie or the other great singers from the swing era? A friend asked me this recently and my initial response was one of irritation. ‘That’s like asking: why Toni Morrison rather than Henry James? They’re wonderful artists from different eras and it’s daft choosing between them.’ But I suppose my friend deserved a better answer. He was wondering, I’d guess, if a young contemporary artist of today could work authentically in a style of music that had had its heyday over half a century ago.
Having thought further, I realise that for me it’s partly the very fact of her being contemporary that makes Stacey special. My encounter with the first Stacey Kent album in 1997 was a revelation precisely because I was hearing reinterpreted – without any sense of pastiche – those great swing era songs in a voice at once steeped in tradition but somehow fresh and unmistakably that of an urbane woman of today. She, and her sublime small band, were revealing to me a hitherto unsuspected universality in those old songs. They were demonstrating how that treasure trove from the past could more than convincingly express the yearnings, hopes and broken dreams of men and women in today’s confused, fragmented world.
But maybe a simpler answer to my friend would have been that Stacey Kent is a singer to match the greats of the past, with an unusual power to hold your attention and control your emotions from the first note.
Why? For one thing, Stacey’s singing never lets us forget these songs are about people. Her protagonists come to life so fully in her voice you sometimes have to remind yourself the CD has no visuals. She has, in fact, much in common with today’s finest screen actors who, assured of the camera’s ability to pick out detail, portray complex shades of personality, motive and feeling through subtle adjustments of face and posture.
Like them, Stacey has complete mastery of her tools, but hardly allows us to be aware of them. In song after song, we find a route to the emotional heart of the music without first having to admire her technique.
It’s been said that one of the most appealing qualities of Stacey’s style is that it is ‘conversational.’ I’d go one step further. She conveys as well as any other singer I’ve heard the sense of a person talking to herself; the faltering hesitancies, the exuberant rushes of inner thought. There is invariably a lover being addressed, but in Stacey’s readings that lover is never in the room. The lyric is what the singer wishes to say, or wishes she had said. We’re witnessing a private moment.
No surprise then to find on this latest album emotions being portrayed never in primary colours, but always subtly shaded. These thirteen Richard Rodgers songs move between the themes of love found and love lost. But it’s never as straightforward as sunshine followed by dark despair. She may convey wonderfully the giddy intoxication of love, and yet she does sound, well, intoxicated – and vulnerable; like a sophisticate who’s suddenly left herself open to naiveté. Then every three or four tracks – as though to confirm our fears – we discover her disappointed and let down, singing something like IT NEVER ENTERED MY MIND or EASY TO REMEMBER. But what’s curious and unique in these exquisitely rendered ballads (and what makes her distinct from Billie Holiday, say, or that other fine singer of her generation, Diana Krall) is the absence of bitterness. What we get is someone going over the broken pieces of her life, trying to coax from somewhere a little courage and perspective. Here’s a great jazz diva of our age.
Kazuo Ishiguro, Author, July 2002
Tenderly
Liner note by writer, ALEX BEAUMONT
“A vida é a arte do encontro” – Vinícius De Moraes
“Life is the art of the encounter.”
Seldom has the great Brazilian poet’s philosophy been more fully realised than in this musical encounter between Stacey Kent and Roberto Menescal.
Roberto Menescal, began his musical journey in the 1950s as a student in Rio De Janeiro. An admirer of the exotic sounds of American Jazz and popular song, one of his earliest inspirations was the recording of Cry Me A River by Julie London and the great guitarist, Barney Kessel.
Stacey Kent, for whom jazz and the Great American Songbook was the soundtrack to her American adolescence, viewed Brazilian music with much the same curious fascination as Menescal had viewed jazz a generation earlier.
Each went on to become an important figure in their own sphere. Menescal, recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2014 Latin Grammy Awards, is one of Brazil’s most important 20th Century musical figures. A composer, guitarist, founding father of Bossa Nova, record producer, his importance to Brazilian music from the late 1950s to the present day can hardly be overstated.
Kent began her musical career as a singer of American standards, Bossa Nova and Chanson before broadening her repertoire to include originals penned by her husband Jim Tomlinson and novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. Bringing her distinctly personal and emotionally intelligent interpretations to a vast repertoire, she has gained a legion of fans for her “less is more” approach.
Menescal’s first encounter with Stacey’s singing came via DJ, Bob Tostes, in 2000. An aficionado of jazz singers, Tostes made a compilation of his favourites for Roberto and his wife, Yara. For them, one track stood out; Stacey’s recording of Gershwin’s Isn’t It A Pity. In it, Menescal recognised a quality that resonated with him; an emotional depth expressed with a quiet, undramatic intensity. This same quality was shared by some of the great Brazilian singers with whom he had worked, like Nara Leão. Who was this American singer? Menescal made it his business to search out more recordings. He became such a fan of Kent that whenever he was producing a new young singer, he would give them a selection of Kent’s recordings with the instruction, “listen to this and then we’ll talk”.
For Stacey, a fan of Brazilian music since her youth, Roberto Menescal was just a name on an album sleeve. The idea that they knew of each other had never occurred to either of them.
Fast forward to 2011 and the Show De Paz, in Rio De Janeiro, a celebration of the 80th Anniversary of the statue of Christ The Redeemer on Corcovado. Stacey had been invited by Marcos Valle to sing his classic Samba De Verão. This was itself a meeting that would result in an enduring musical and personal friendship that has yielded a live album, many concerts and a DVD in the making.
It was after her performance with Marcos that the encounter that led to this recording took place. In all the bustle backstage neither Stacey nor Menescal had seen the running order or artist list. Menescal was in the wings when Stacey spotted Roberto, guitar in hand. On the verge of stage-struck, she could only say “Roberto!” Menescal, recognising Stacey from the covers of his cherished CDs reciprocated, “Stacey!”
A hurried exchange of addresses sealed the friendship. Subsequent meetings in Brazil and a regular exchange of emails and telephone calls allowed the new friends to make up for the years already lost. For two artists of such remarkable empathy and mutual admiration, a recording project was the next natural step.
For Menescal, it was the chance to realise a life’s ambition of recording an album of American standards. But beyond this, it was to be recorded with his favourite standards singer, Stacey Kent. For Kent, it was the chance to work with an idol and one of the founding fathers of a genre that has had such an impact on her own musical aesthetic.
With Jim Tomlinson on saxophone and alto flute and Jeremy Brown on bass, this intimate collection of songs is something of a homecoming for both Stacey and Roberto. For Stacey, it is a return to the Great American Songbook and for Roberto, it is a return to the jazz roots that inspired that young guitarist in the heyday of the Bossa Nova years.
The choice of Tenderly as the title track could scarcely be more apposite. Its first recording in 1947 is by Brazilian crooner, Dick Farney. Accompanied by the Paul Baron Orchestra, it is the perfect expression of the policy of boa vizinhança (neighbourliness) that characterised US/Brazilian cultural relations in the 1930s and 40s. That same boa vizinhança runs right through this album.
And so, that chance encounter in 2011 has resulted in some of the most distinctively focused and beautiful work of each of these artists’ careers. It represents so much more than just the art of meeting. It is also truly the meeting of art.
Alex Beaumont