Clare Teal is set to jazz up this year’s Investec International Music Festival. Jane McGowan talks to the superstar singer as she heads for the hills...
Clare Teal has been entertaining the nation as both singer and presenter for the best part of 20 years. Her warm, mellow vocals reflect sounds from a distant age when swing was king and songwriters such as Cy Coleman, Johnny Mercer and Cole Porter ruled the world. And her broadcasting style has proved just as winning: more than half a million people regularly tune in to her Sunday evening Radio 2 show, her easy chat and impressive musical knowledge garnering fans from across the world.
This month, Clare and her Trio take centre stage at Denbies Wine Estate, near Dorking, as part of the Investec International Music Festival held at venues around the Surrey Hills.
“This is the second time we have been asked – it’s a lovely gig,” enthuses Clare, who averages 70 concerts a year with her trusty band of musicians: Jason Rebello (piano), Simon Little (bass) and Ben Reynolds (drums).
Born in North Yorkshire in 1973, Clare developed her love of music through listening to her father’s collection of ‘78s’ – 78 rpm records. Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan enthralled her, while the big band sounds of Count Basie and the like proved even more thrilling.
“I was immediately drawn to it. I didn’t know why as a five-year-old, but I think I just loved the sounds. From then on, I sought it out and just couldn’t get enough of those arrangements and voices.”
Clare quickly decided that music was something she wanted to pursue, learning both the keyboards and the clarinet. But it was while studying at Wolverhampton University (previously Polytechnic) that she really, as it were, found her voice.
“One day I was supposed to be taking an exam, but I genuinely don’t think I knew about it,” she explains. “I was always hanging around the music block and I bumped into my tutor. He said: ‘Don’t forget you’ve got an exam in 20 minutes.’ And I was like: ‘What exam? I haven’t even got my clarinet with me.’”
The exam was to contribute to Clare’s final marks and she wasn’t willing to fail. So, with no time to retrieve her instrument from home, she decided to sing.
“I just thought: ‘Well, if I die, I die,’” she laughs. “I had always been so nervous playing in front of people, but when I started to sing, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. It was a bit wobbly, and maybe not in the right key, but I got my best ever grade. It was a light bulb moment. I thought: ‘Maybe I can do this.’”
She was not wrong. Following a brief career in telesales – “That job taught me a lot, but I would do literally anything not to go back to cold calling” – Clare’s big break arrived when she stood in for US jazz vocalist Stacey Kent at a festival in Wales. From there she landed a contract with Candid Records, before signing for big boys Sony in 2004 for a record-breaking deal said to be worth £3m.
Today she splits her time between her radio show and performing, travelling the world with her unique take on music old and new.
“Basically, I am a fan of pop music. It’s just that it’s mainly the pop music of the 1930s and 40s,” she laughs. “I do try to incorporate more contemporary songs into the set. We have been messing around with a Katy Perry song recently, and I was thinking: ‘Now, what would Peggy Lee do with that?’
“Part of the game is finding songs that will withstand different interpretations – you know, putting something like We’ll Gather Lilacs next to Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars. I am carving a path through 100 years of music and I just hope people like where I’m going.”
You can hear Clare Teal and her Trio at Denbies Wine Estate, Dorking on May 2, 8 pm. For more details visit: iimf.co.uk
