Kaz Simmons: a singer making her own way

Sebastian Scotney spoke to jazz singer Kaz Simmons about her fourth album Signs.

Singer Kaz Simmons Photo: kazsimmons.com/

By Sebastian Scotney

1:00PM BST 25 Sep 2013

When I asked Kaz Simmons if there was a logic, a story behind the collection of extremely strong songs in her fourth album, Signs, she gave not one, but two answers: “I've been thinking about programme order ever since I was a kid”. And then, in a telling aside: "All of my songs are stories."

Kaz Simmons grew up in Hove, did undergraduate music studies at Goldsmiths. She was christened Karen, and hated it. “Then someone in a group of freshers in my first week at Goldsmith's decided I was Kaz, and it stuck”. And then? “I basically stayed in south-east London. I worked for two years at Mick Fleetwood's memorabilia and film props auction house Fleetwood Owen."

She then signed up for the jazz postgraduate course at Trinity. Who was there at the same time as her? “There was Kevin Jones of Bear's Den, who was the co-founder of the Communion label with Mumford's Ben Lovett, there was Adam Waldmann – and the Puppini Sisters formed there in my time."

And has she always written songs? "No. People had always told me I ought to write songs. but I only started in my mid twenties. I discovered Rufus Wainwright, it was the first time in years I'd been moved quite like that and it inspired me to write songs. It was the bluntness of the lyrics. I'm not really flowery, poetic. I related to what was personal."

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/10330766/Kaz-Simmons-a-singer-making-her-own-way.html