Dazzling ambassador of vocal jazz, Stacey Kent, returns with Summer Me, Winter Me, a beautiful collection of new compositions and classic ‘chanson’ repertoire. Most of the songs are standards that Kent performed in the years leading up to the album’s three recording sessions, including music by Michel Legrand, Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe and Jobim. There are also songs that have passed from the book of chansons to that of standards thanks to English adaptations – ‘If You Go Away’, recorded for the first time in English, is Jacques Brel’s ‘Ne me quitte pas’ with lyrics by Hal McKuen, and ‘Sous le ciel de Paris’ becomes ‘Under Paris Skies’ with lyrics by Kim Gannon. The album features new songs by Jim Tomlinson, ‘Thinking About The Rain’ and ‘A Song That Isn’t Finished Yet’, written with Cliff Goldmacher as well as a reworking of ‘Postcard Lovers’, with lyrics by Kazuo Ishiguro. “(‘Postcard Lovers’) was originally written for our live album, Dreamer in Concert,” explains Tomlinson. “In subsequent years, I came to feel that I’d left the writing room a little too soon, and so I began the process of revising the song around Stacey’s suggestion of transposing it to 3/4 time. The result is what you hear on this album, lyrically unaltered, but compositionally completed.”
“Which album is that song on?” is a question I often get asked after a concert at signings,” says Kent. “Since our set lists invariably include a mixture of old and new repertoire, the answer is sometimes, “it’s not on any album.” This album is therefore a collection of those songs. It’s a response to all those people who have said over the years, somewhat disappointed, “you haven’t recorded ‘If You Go Away’?” and so on. This is also the first time I’ve recorded a song twice on the same album. ‘If You Go Away’ entered my repertoire in 2018 when Jim wrote an orchestral arrangement for a concert in Paris. I was also singing Jacques Brel’s original, ‘Ne me quitte pas’, from time to time. But whatever the language, someone would ask why I hadn’t sung it in the other. Some singers have responded by interpolating both languages into the same version. Since both sets of lyrics are beautiful on their own terms and are equally deserving of inclusion, I chose to record them both. So, whilst not exactly a requests album, Summer Me, Winter Me is a response to that informal and unscientific sounding, a representative selection of some of your “requests”. I hope you are pleased with this selection and I look forward to seeing you at my next concert and to being able to say, “it’s on this album”.”
Book launch: 7 March 2024 ‘The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain‘ by Kazuo Ishiguro, A collection of Ishiguro’s lyrics written for Stacy Kent
