Genre
Vocal jazz. "A Time for Love" continues Kent's shift toward a more minimalist sensibility: joined by her husband, saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, and pianist Art Hirahara, the trio takes on covers from a variety of sources including the Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, Burt Bacharach, Serge Gainsbourg, and Brazilian and Italian repertoire - maintaining the intimate, softly lit café atmosphere that has defined her recent recordings.
Release
Released on April 3, 2026, by Naïve Records, under exclusive licence to the label via Token Productions. The album contains ten songs with a total running time of 41 minutes. It was preceded by the EP A Little Time for Love (2025).
Production
Produced by Jim Tomlinson, who also played saxophone and percussion on selected tracks alongside pianist Art Hirahara. Percussion was additionally contributed by Jim Tomlinson (tracks 5 and 10) and Stacey Kent herself (track 5).
Reception
Presto Music designated it Recording of the Week on April 3, 2026, praising Kent's "voice as light as air and as smooth as honey" and her "nuanced and refreshing undertaking of standards, bossa nova, and French chanson." The Spectrum Culture review described the album as "no less lovely" while acknowledging that the trio's minimalist approach "might come as a surprise to some devoted fans."
Stacey Kent
Born in South Orange, New Jersey in 1965, Kent earned a degree in comparative literature at Sarah Lawrence College before travelling to England to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she met tenor saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married in 1991. She launched her recording career with Close Your Eyes (1997) and has since built one of the most distinctive multilingual vocal catalogues in contemporary jazz — spanning standards, bossa nova, chanson française, and originals written with Tomlinson and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, with whom the trio has collaborated since 2006. She has also recorded with Brazilian legends Marcos Valle, Roberto Menescal, and Danilo Caymmi, and the celebrated Quatuor Ébène. Her accolades include the British Jazz Award (2001), the BBC Jazz Award for Best Vocalist (2002), a Grammy nomination for Breakfast on the Morning Tram (2009), the Best Vocal Performance prize at the 2022 Jazz Music Awards in Atlanta, and the Prix Ella Fitzgerald at the 2023 Montreal Jazz Festival.
This text was generated with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence.
