Lucky star

STACEY KENT'S STORY gives hope to bathroom balladeers the world over.

Before she went to Europe in the early 1990s, Kent had never really sung for anyone outside her close-knit group of family and friends back in her native New York. To celebrate her graduation from Sarah Lawrence College, where she'd been studying comparative literature, she treated herself to a European holiday.

In 1991, she met up with a bunch of musicians in Oxford, England - and they discovered her voice. Gigs at small London cafes soon led to a spot with the Vile Bodies Swing Orchestra at the Ritz Hotel. Word spread: she played a lounge singer in Ian McKellen's film version of Richard III, international solo bookings followed, and Kent fast became one of the top-selling jazz artists of her generation - a soulful, smoky talent paired with the man who would become her husband, British tenor saxophonist Jim Tomlinson.

The records began to flow, and so did the recognition. It began with Close Your Eyes in 1997, and her five releases since have resulted in a 2001 British jazz award, a 2002 BBC jazz award for best vocalist, the 2004 backstage bistro award, and a gig on BBC Radio 3 as presenter of Jazz Legends.

Sometimes, she says by phone from her base in London, she still has to pinch herself. 'After finishing my degree I wasn't expecting to do this,' she says. 'So that first period was very magical. I wasn't thinking about the audience - all that mattered to me was that I had this hunger to sing.

'I had never recognised that before, or thought that I would have the opportunity to sing professionally. I mean, I was always a singer. I sang for everyone - for friends, for my little sister when she was sick, for myself when I was doing chores. I just wanted to sing. But I had never realised I could make a career of it.'