Stacey Kent (born March 27, 1965) is an American jazz singer. 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. âA vida é a arte do encontro, embora haja tanto desencontro pela vida.â -
The orchestra, a 52-piece London studio assemblage, has a lushness that would smother Nelson Riddle - yet Kent cuts through it effortlessly. Having devoured the recordings of Julie London and Barney Kessell in his youth, Menescal had always harboured a wish to record an album of standards along those lines.
She is married to saxophonist Jim Tomlinson. For Kent, it was the chance to work with a musical idol a one of the founding fathers of a musical genre that had completely informed her musical aesthetic. This album represents so much more than just the art of meeting.
Such was their musical empathy that further recordings were bound to follow. For Menescal, meeting Stacey was the chance to realise that lifeâs ambition, and beyond this, to record that album with his favourite standards singer. Several 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. With Staceyâs husband on saxophone and flute and Jeremy Brown on bass, this intimate collection of songs is something of a homecoming for both Stacey and Roberto. Kent often sings in French and was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Minister of Culture in 2009.
STACEY KENT - DOWNBEAT - 5-STARS I KNOW I DREAM: THE ORCHESTRAL SESSIONS OKEH/SONY * * * * * Stacey Kent ’s mezzo-soprano voice is a beautiful instrument for offsetting orchestral accompaniment, a fact that I KNOW I DREAM illustrates well. Despite being separated by generations, continents, cultures and languages, this chance encounter in 2011 has resulted in some of the most distinctively focused and beautiful work of each of their careers.
It is also truly the meeting of art.
A hurried exchange of email addresses in the wings sealed the friendship.
For two artists of such remarkable empathy, a recording project was the next natural step. Stacey Kent began her musical career as an interpreter of American standards, bringing her own unmistakable, intimate and emotionally intelligent stylings to a vast repertoire. A natural minimalist, she to gained a legion of fans for her “less is more” approach. Their first recorded collaboration was for Staceyâs 2013 album, The Changing Lights, which included Menescalâs timeless classic, O Barquinho and the Jim Tomlinson/Antonio Ladeira original, A Tarde, both with Roberto on guitar.
Until that encounter, neither had the least idea that each was aware of each other.