An Night with Kazuo Ishiguro & Stacey Kent
(Queen Elizabeth Corridor. 30 March 2024. Assessment by Dominique Jackson)

“What ought to a modern-day jazz tune appear like?” was the conundrum Kazuo Ishiguro needed to wrestle when Stacey Kent first requested him to pen some unique lyrics.

The genial Nobel and Booker laureate confessed his preliminary trepidation as he launched a triumphant and completely distinctive night of crossover and collaboration with the acclaimed American-born singer, who delivered a elegant, but relaxed, set of songs by ‘Ish’ and Kent’s husband, Jim Tomlinson. The trio was accomplished by the masterful Artwork Hirahara on piano and keyboards.

The Nagasaki-born, British author talked warmly about his collaboration with the couple, which started again in 2002, after Ishiguro chosen certainly one of Stacey’s tracks for his Desert Island Discs look on BBC Radio 4.

The Queen Elizabeth Corridor occasion marked the publication, by Faber & Faber, of “The Summer season We Crossed Europe within the Rain”, a handsomely produced quantity of the lyrics, accompanied by the hanging and opulent illustrations of Italian artist, Bianca Bagnarelli. Bagnarelli, an award profitable fumettista cartoonist, was additionally launched, to enthusiastic applause.

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An unique, and barely subversive, tone was immediately conjured by the opening quantity: “Tango in Macao”, with its evocations of rusty ceiling followers, darkish alleys and damaged hearted gangsters, set to Tomlinson’s disquieting saxophone and the piano’s meticulous echoing of the Latin dance rhythms.

“Postcard lovers”, subsequent, amplified the nostalgic, overtly cinematic, really feel with the deceptively easy interaction of flute and keyboard underlining Ishiguro’s wistful lyrics, considering a putative relationship, foiled by each distance and time.

In “Waiter, Oh Waiter”, the lyrics take a decidedly playful flip, with one more displaced traveller, agonizing over the mysteries of a overseas menu, accompanied by an exuberant bossa nova, properly balanced between Hirahara and Tomlinson.

Journeys, each temporal and spatial, together with locations and locations, each acquainted and far-flung, loom giant in these compositions. Typically, fairly actually, as in “Bullet Practice”.

That is one other deeply reflective, first individual ponder, which appears to comprise the bones of a complete Ishiguro novel in a sequence of deftly drawn vignettes. Bolstering this narrative of “Nowheresville, Japan”, the exact syncopation of Tomlinson’s melodies viscerally recalled the movement of the Shinkansen specific, “Tokyo to Nagoya, Nagoya to Berlin”.

Ishiguro himself talked of the challenges of adequately describing these often thorny, amorous predicaments, acknowledging that Kent herself had implored him to retain ‘some sliver of hope’ in even the saddest of eventualities.

The second half of the night opened with a perceptive interview, performed by broadcaster and journalist, Samira Ahmed, who coaxed various beguiling aperçus from the distinguished author. They debated the character of collaboration and the distinctions, obvious and covert, between writing phrases for music and novels or screenplays. For Ishiguro, tune lyrics are most undoubtedly not a poem.

In a relaxed and unaffected colloquy, Ish, as his mates all name him, revealed how he usually comes up with doable titles by thumbing by cookbooks along with his spouse, Lorna. The writer additionally acknowledged the main affect on his work of his blended cultural heritage, rising up Japanese within the very English House Counties.

For Ish, this was clearly a privileged, virtually magical, collaboration and a return, of types, to the fevered tune writing which, he admitted, marked the beginning, aged 15, of his personal writing profession. He credit these early songs, as a type of ‘delirious, stream of consciousness’ apprenticeship for his later, prize-winning, longer and decidedly ‘much less purple, extra pared down’ work.

The trio of performers returned to the stage for a valedictory model of “The Ice Resort”, an early Tomlinson-Ishiguro composition, first recorded in 2007. This was interpreted, together with her usually understated, but extremely emotional intelligence, by Kent. With an infinite, palatial snowscape by Bianca Bagnarelli projected overhead, it made for an eloquent conclusion to a fascinating night.

Stacey Kent performs six nights at Ronnie Scott’s 7-12 Could 2024 – BOOKINGS

(*) Images reproduced from Ted Hodgkinson’s Twitter feed along with his permission

LINKS: Characteristic by Martin Chilton
2015 Ishiguro interview by Boyd Tonkin about lyric-writing
The Summer season… at Faber & Faber