Stacey Kent – I Know I Dream: The Orchestral Sessions

Stacey Kent, one of the most important contemporary jazz singers, will perform in Poland for the first time with the accompaniment of a symphony orchestra. Songs from the album ‘I Know I Dream: Orchestral Sessions’ will sound in Szczecin. The artist will perform them together with the musicians of the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.

The concert in Szczecin will constitute a unique opportunity to see how Kent’s sophisticated mezzo-soprano will harmonize one scene with the symphony orchestra instruments.
The 2017 record ‘I Know I Dream: Orchestral Sessions’ was released by the OKeh / Sony Music label. More than 50 orchestral musicians took part in the recording. The album received high marks, including 5 stars from the ‘DownBeat’ magazine, and the title of the Album of the Year in the vocal category in the competition Jazz Japan Awards. The album's reviews focus on the intimate and emotional atmosphere of the recordings and the pure pleasure coming from the combination of the arrangement with the voice of Stacey Kent. The reviewers also emphasize harmony, which consists of the subtlety of Kent’s singing and the delicate sound of the orchestra.

The album ‘I Know I Dream: Orchestral Sessions’ includes, among others, new compositions, standards straight from Brazil and the piece by Serge Gainsbourg. There are samba and chanson. It seems that the important inspiration for this album was the work of Astrud Gilberto, the performer of bossa nova.
While working on this album, as with many previous projects, Stacey Kent collaborated with her husband Jim Tomlinson, composer and producer, and with Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017.
Stacey Kent has been present on the music scene for 20 years. She has sold over 2 million albums, performed in over 50 countries, won numerous awards, including the title of Jazz Vocalist of the Year in the BBC Jazz Awards in 2001. She received a Grammy Award nomination for the album ‘Breakfast on the Morning Tram.’ She has left a very characteristic subtle mark on the standards, and also introduced new sounds into the canon. The aesthetics of Stacy Kent stretches between jazz, pop and bossa nova, similar to the works of Cassandra Wilson, Diana Krall and Melody Gardot. In a sense, Kent does not recognize boundaries of genre and language – performing in English, French and Portuguese.