Breakfast on the Morning Tram

Stacey Kent | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 2, 2007)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Blue Note Records
• ASIN: B000TEUCFA
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,461 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Ice Hotel

2. Landslide

3. Ces Petits Riens

4. I Wish I Could Go Travelling Again

5. So Many Stars

6. Samba Saravah

7. Breakfast on the Morning Tram

8. Never Let Me Go

9. So Romantic

10. Hard-Hearted Hannah

11. La Saison des Pluies

12. What a Wonderful World

Editorial Reviews

After 10 years and 6 albums on the indie label, Candid, Stacey Kent finally releases her major label debut on Blue Note Records. A multi-award winner (2001 British Jazz Award, 2002 BBC Jazz Award Best Vocalist, etc) Stacey has built a huge fanbase for her cool, classy interpretations of the Great American Songbook, all recorded with husband, arranger, producer and now songwriter Jim Tomlinson (himself a winner of the 2006 Album of the Year British Jazz Award). On "Breakfast..." Jim contributes 4 new songs written with the writer Kazuo Ishiguro - one of a legion of fans that Stacey has attracted over the years (they met after he played one of her songs on Desert Island Discs!!) and this is the first time that they have featured their own songs on an album. Stacey tours constantly - she even turned down an appearance on Parkinson because she was playing a gig (admittedly this would have been her second performance on Parkinson, which in itself is quite unique) - and has built up a very sizeable fanbase which will be determined to get the album as soon as possible. However, since Stacey is out of the UK through September we will be focusing our promotion and marketing push at the start of October as a preview to the forthcoming residency at Ronnie Scotts in November 1st - 3rd. Stacey will be available for press and promotion in late September/early October and we fully expect to find her on some major shows. In the past, her appearances on shows such as Parkinson, CBS Sunday Morning in the USA and even Swedish tv have driven an immediate and impressive sales response pushing her to number 1 and 2 in the Amazon.com charts as an example. As well as the Ronnie Scott dates in November Stacey will play a significant number of dates in the UK both this year. See below for information.

More from Stacey Kent

The Boy Next Door	In Love Again - The Music of Richard Rodgers	Close Your Eyes
Love Is...The Tender Trap	Dreamsville	Let Yourself Go: Celebrating Fred Astaire
Collection	Collection II	The Lyric

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars She delivers with elegance.., April 16, 2008

By 

Pedder (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Breakfast on the Morning Tram (Audio CD)

She may be not as popular as in U.K (where they consider her a British possession ), but the American-born singer always delivers with style.
A recent addition to the Blue Note roster of recording artists, now Stacey Kent boasts in U.K. six best-selling albums, a string of awards, including the 2001 British Jazz Award and 2002 BBC Jazz Award "Best Vocalist", the 2004 Backstage Bistro Award and the 2006 Album of the Year for The Lyric featuring Stacey Kent as well as a fan base that enables her to sell out concert halls around the world.
Her latest album "Breakfast On a Morning Tram" includes a mixture of classic standards as well as new songs written and produced by her husband and saxophonist, Jim Tomlinson, and has on her team a surprise star writer (award-winning novelist) Kazuo Ishiguro, who supplies four angular lyrics on her Blue Note debut.
"She conveys the sense of a person talking to herself". Ishiguro wrote, "the faltering hesitancies, the exuberant rushes of inner thought".
It probably would have been easy for the expat American to continue ploughing a comfortable swing-revivalist furrow.
For the past 10 years, she has been mainly singing numbers form the great American Songbooks. However, on this CD, she sings lesser known beautiful songs (a folksily soulful "Landslide" - from Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks), a couple of Serge Gainsbourg romances delivered in French ( "Ces petits riens" and "La saison des Pluies"') , another pearl of a song, the elegant bossa nova "Samba Savarah", also delicately sung in French and three numbers from the Songbook, a bluesily swinging "Hard Hearted Hannah", "Never let me go" and and an account of "What a Wonderful World" as a wondering whisper.
She did sing Bacharach, Paul Simon and Carole Kind in her previous exquisite album The Boy Next Door , but this CD has a fresher approach.
Full marks to her, then, for having the courage to take this new departure, a collection of songs that occasionally tilts in the direction of Norah Jones, another artist who has made the most of a narrow vocal range.
Kent's light, girlish voice and avoidance of dynamic or emotional extremes is applied here to a wider range of material than the Broadway standards that made her name.
Kent can get a hard time from the cognoscenti for her dinner-jazzy Latin shuffles and faintly coy delivery, and there are certainly times on her albums where you wish John Zorn might crash in.
But the shift from dark, low sounds to edgier ascending pleas is genuinely affecting on "Never Let Me Go". John Parricelli's guitar is a delight, and Jim Tomlinson's soft sax is as supportive as ever; and Kent's timing and care with lyrics shows how much she cares about this fragile world of almost-jazz.
Stacey sounds understandably self-conscious on some of the modern material, but the lissom guitar-based arrangements leave you eager to hear where the next step will take her.
"Her voice is sometimes a whisper, sometimes a confiding murmur, sometimes an exhilarated exclamation; but whatever the idiom or the mood, individual listeners frequently feel that Stacey's music was intended for their ears only". - John Fordham

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stacey Kent Enjoys Her Growth, October 29, 2007

By 

Stephanie DePue (Carolina Beach, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Breakfast on the Morning Tram (Audio CD)

British-American singer Stacey Kent's new album, "Breakfast On The Morning Tram," shows the youthful jazz chanteuse with the sweet, yet strong voice, to be enjoying unprecedented growth in her career. She's put together a bigger band, with a number of talented musicians, and she's allowed them lots of room to stretch on this disk. She has also, for the first time, recorded original compositions: this album has only three songs from the Great American Songbook, on which she had so successfully relied until now. She has also moved on from her first recording label, the small independent Candid, to the prestigious jazzy Blue Note.

Kent, who was born in South Orange, New Jersey, met her talented husband, saxophonist, now producer/arranger/composer, Jim Tomlinson, with whom she works, while both were students at London's 125 year old Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The singer, whose clear voice and delivery lie somewhere between the flirtatious sound of Norah Jones, and the ever-popular smoky barroom sound now delivered by Diana Krall and Claire Martin, among others, was initially championed by British critic and jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton. She credits Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, Nancy Wilson, and Cannonball Adderley as the biggest influences on her work. She has won the 2001 British Jazz Award, and the 2002 British Broadcasting Corporation Jazz Award for Best Vocalist. She has a large, devoted following that should be pleased by her newest release.

"Breakfast" gives more than a nod to France, where Kent did post-graduate work, and is exceedingly popular: she was, in fact, signed by the Paris office of Blue Note. The French gave the 2006 "Boy Next Door" Gold Album status within six months of its release. They've greeted "Breakfast" by giving it, within six weeks of its release, Top #20 status on the general charts, and Top #10 status on the jazz charts; they've also given it an enthusiastic sell-out audience at Paris's legendary Olympia Music Hall. The new album includes two songs Kent identifies as her personal favorites from the works of the French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, "Ces Petits Riens," and "La Saison des Pluies." It also includes a cover of that rhythmic tune from "Un Homme et Une Femme," (that'll be "A Man and A Woman," to us), "Samba Saravah," by Pierre Barouh.

"So Many Stars" is another lilting samba on this Latin-tinged record, music by the Brazilian Sergio Mendes, words by the American powerhouse duo Marilyn and Alan Bergman. In addition, Kent covers "Landslide," by Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac, in tribute to the Colorado Rockies, where she and Tomlinson enjoy spending their down time. "Never Let Me Go," "Hard Hearted Hannah," and "Wonderful World" are from the Great American Songbook that's served the singer so well.

Finally, "Breakfast" boasts four unusual, outstanding new compositions, all with lyrics by British Booker Prize winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote the liner notes for the 2003 release "In Love Again," and music by Tomlinson, with whose saxophone Kent sings in delicious close harmony. These songs, the Latin-grooving "Ice Hotel," the title song, "I Wish I Could Go Travelling Again," and "So Romantic," allow Kent's whispering voice to suggest, as Ishiguro has noted, almost a private, inner conversation, with its hesitations and asides, that remains close to the rhythms, inflections, and informalities of everyday speech. But then, so many of her listeners feel that Kent is singing for them alone, telling a wistful story, as she likes to do. Famous jazz lover Clint Eastwood asked her to perform at his 70th birthday party. Most of us can't quite afford that, unfortunately, but I've been lucky enough to catch her a few times in her month-long stands at New York's esteemed Algonquin Hotel: and, yes, she's also played Carnegie Hall. You want to catch her if you can.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This dynamic duo has done it again!, October 7, 2007

By 

tunisianswife "Susan D" (Cincinnati, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Breakfast on the Morning Tram (Audio CD)

After waiting with wild anticipation for this release, I have to say that I was not disappointed. I really enjoy the wide range of songs on this release; it is refreshing to hear some original songs as well as a few standards. Ms. Kent's amazing voice has never been better. After listening to it, I fall in love with these songs more and more. Mr. Ishiguro's contributions make "Ice Hotel" such a great song. (the more I listen to it, the more I understand the deeper meaning of it). I agree that Ms. Kent seems so at ease on this release. Her arrangement of "Landslide" sounds better than the original. I just love the variety of French and English. My only regret is that there were not more solos of Mr. Tomlinson's, as I really enjoy his sax playing. Just a sweet, sweet release that will surprise many with the originals. I just hope we don't have to wait long for her next release. I can never get enough. BRAVO to Ms. Kent and Mr. Tomlinson.