With over 2
million albums sold, a Grammy nomination and international recognition as one
of the most successful and prolific jazz vocalist of her time, Stacey Kent
stands strong among the artists that don’t have much left to prove. She
surprises us once more with her brand new album, I Know I Dream. Recorded
inside the famous Angel Studios in London with an orchestra of around 60
musicians, this is her first orchestral album in a career that spans two
decades and more than 15 albums.
Stacey thought a long time about making such a
record, but was waiting for the right time, as she states: “I’m very patient.
This was something I knew I needed to do one day or another, but I didn’t want
to make it at any cost or rush it in any way”. So when Sony and OKeh asked her
about making an album with a big orchestra, she felt this was the moment: “It’s
not every day that you get a call about a project with 58 musicians! Nowadays
everyone tries to be reasonable but Sony had a real artistic vision”.
Meticulously
produced by Tommy Lawrence and Stacey’s longtime collaborator (and husband!)
Jim Tomlinson, the songs are arranged in a way that they are transporting the
listeners instead of the size of the orchestra, which brings harmony and depth
to the record and to the stories it tells. The most important thing for Stacey
Kent was “to keep our sensibility and, at the center of everything, our sense
of intimacy”. I Know I Dream revisits in fact the quintessence of her
repertoire and soul with three songs in French (Juliette Greco’s Les Amours
Perdues, originally written by Serge Gainsbourg, Nino Ferrer’s La Rua Madureira
and Léo Ferré’s Avec le temps), four new compositions and five covers of
Brazilian timeless classics including, for example, Carlos Jobim’s Photograph.
I Know I Dream is a majestic and smooth delight, both panoramic and intimate at
the same time: a self-portrait with a big orchestra, like a confidence
whispered with 58 accomplices.
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