STACEY KENT the Changing Lights English Bio Liner Notes
Stacey Kent - "The Changing Lights" The critic Gilles Tordjman once wrote that Brazil was not a nation, but "a region of the heart, where everything seems to ring to the tune of a stronger and more accurate vibration". This is a sentence that Stacey Kent could no doubt make her own. At the age of 14, the American singer discovered the endless charms of the album, Getz / Gilberto, an historic encounter of jazz and bossa nova, after which nothing would ever be the same. Over the course of a musical journey that has wandered freely in the open spaces of jazz and song, Brazil became, in her eyes, more than a country: a kind of internalized poetic horizon, a chosen land on an intimate scale, adjusted to the proportions of her soul, her singing and her inspiration. Whether she literally celebrates them through covers of Tom Jobim, Sergio Mendes or Luiz Bonfá, or whether she summons the spirit through the finesse of her performances, Stacey Kent has never loosened the emotional ties that bind her to Brazilian music. An eternal student, this well-informed polyglot, with a degree in comparative literature, has followed her passion to the point of learning the Portuguese language and taking an interest in the cultural and political history of the giant auriverde. It is this passion, made both of depth and lightness, that pervades her tenth album. The Changing Lights is not "Stacey Kent's Brazilian record". It is more a recreational break or a sound postcard than a stuffy exercise of style. In collaboration with her partner and husband, the English saxophonist, composer and arranger, Jim Tomlinson, Stacey Kent simply displays all the sensitive qualities of a musician for whom Brazil represents, precisely and foremost, "a region of the heart".
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