Stacey Kent

At the 2006 BBC Jazz Awards, Tomlinson, upon receiving the award for "Album of the Year" for The Lyric, announced that Kent had signed with Blue Note. Kent's album, The Boy Next Door achieved Gold album status in France in September, 2006. Breakfast On The Morning Tram (2007) achieved Platinum album status in France in November, 2007 and Gold album status in Germany in February, 2008 and was nominated for Best Vocal Jazz Album at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Kent appeared in Ian McKellen's 1995 film version of Richard III, singing a jazz version of Christopher Marlowe's poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Booker Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the liner notes to Kent's 2003 album, In Love Again. Ishiguro has co-written four of the songs on the fall 2007 Blue Note album Breakfast on the Morning Tram. One of the songs written by Ishiguro, "The Ice Hotel", with music composed by Tomlinson, won first prize in the International Songwriting Competition in April 2008. On 31 March 2009 Kent received the National Order of Arts and Letters (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) - a government decoration - in recognition of her contribution to the arts, from French Culture Minister Christine Albanel. Stacey's 2010 album, Raconte-Moi (Blue Note/EMI), is an all-French album, which achieved Gold album status in France and Germany. Her latest album, Dreamer In Concert (Blue Note/EMI), is a live album, recorded on May 30–31, 2011, at La Cigale, in Paris. The album includes three previously unrecorded selections: Antônio Carlos Jobim's "Waters of March", and two new compositions by her husband, saxophonist and the album's producer Jim Tomlinson: "Postcard Lovers", with lyrics once again by the novelist, Kazuo Ishiguro, (author of Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go) and "O Comboio", penned by the Portuguese poet António Ladeira, which she sings in Portuguese.