Stacey Kent (born March 27, 1965) is an American jazz singer from South Orange, New Jersey. Kent was nominated for a Grammy Award and was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Minister of Culture in 2009. She is married to saxophonist, composer Jim Tomlinson, who produces Kent's albums and writes songs for her with his lyricist partner, novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. Early life and education Stacey Kent was born in South Orange, New Jersey. Her paternal grandfather was Russian and grew up in France. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, she traveled to England to study music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where she met saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married on August 9, 1991. Career In the 1990s, she began her professional career singing at Café Bohème in London's Soho. After two or three years, she began opening for established acts at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London. In 1995, she appeared in Richard Loncraine's film Richard III (starring Ian McKellen), singing "Come Live with Me and Be My Love" (composed by Trevor Jones) at the Grand Ball celebrating the Yorkist triumph in the Wars of the Roses. Her first album, Close Your Eyes, was released in 1997. Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the liner notes to Kent's 2003 album, In Love Again. Ishiguro met Kent after he chose her recording of "They Can't Take That Away from Me" as one of his Desert Island Discs in 2002. In 2006, Tomlinson and Ishiguro began to write songs for her. Ishiguro has said of his lyric writing that "with an intimate, confiding, first-person song, the meaning must not be self-sufficient on the page. It has to be oblique, sometimes you have to read between the lines" and that this realization has had an "enormous influence" on his fiction writing. Tomlinson and Ishiguro co-wrote four songs on the album Breakfast on the Morning Tram. The first of their songs, "The Ice Hotel", won first prize in the International Songwriting Competition in April 2008. Kent recorded several more Tomlinson/Ishiguro songs on Dreamer In Concert, The Changing Lights, and I Know I Dream: The Orchestral Sessions. Tomlinson and Ishiguro have subsequently written songs for three more of her albums (Dreamer, The Changing Lights and I Know I Dream) and continue to write for her today. Popular success Kent's