WITH her ears permanently pricked up as she went about her daily life, acclaimed jazz singer Stacey Kent was ready to become a musician long before embarking on her successful career.

But she was well set on a route into academia that, if it had not taken her directly into the path of saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, she may never have meandered off course.

An American language student, she met her future husband on a trip to Oxford. Together, they decided to become professional musicians instead of academics.

"If you were a fatalist you would think I was set out on this career anyway – I was certainly a musician as a kid, it’s just that I don’t come from a family of artists, I come from a family of academics, and it just wasn’t something that one did," she explains.

"It’s left me with a certain philosophy in my life that doesn’t stop simply at my music – that anything can happen at any time."

Kent’s parents encouraged her love of music, taking her to concerts at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, but "there was just no discussion about what I could do with it".