Clare Teal

Clare Teal developed a childhood fixation on her grandmother’s vintage 45s by Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, a passion that eventually propelled the critically acclaimed vocalist to prominence as one of the leading figures in the U.K. contemporary jazz world. She was born in 1973 in Kildwick, a small Yorkshire village, where she first took up piano, clarinet, and electronic organ before enrolling in music studies at Wolverhampton University. There, an unplanned exam performance unexpectedly revealed her vocal talent. Following periods spent composing jingles and working in advertising sales, she secured a recording agreement with the specialist jazz imprint Candid Records and issued three albums on the label: That’s the Way It Is, Orsino’s Songs, and The Road Less Travelled. In 2004 she obtained the largest contract ever awarded to a U.K. jazz act when she joined Sony, and her first release for the major, Don’t Talk, reached the Top 20. Beginning in 2005 she became a familiar voice on BBC Radio 2, presenting both the Big Band Special and Friday Night Is Music Night; the following year she received the BBC Jazz Vocalist of the Year award. Since then Teal has issued three further albums—Paradisi Carousel in 2007, Get Happy in 2008, and Live at the Ebenezer Chapel in 2009—made a guest appearance on Helmut Lotti’s Time to Swing, and is scheduled to deliver her next studio set, Clare Teal Sings the Great British Songbook, in 2011.