Kristen Lee Sergeant Returns To Boston

Celebrate Kristen Lee Sergeant's return to the Boston stage with her new DownBeat Editor's Pick album "Smolder" at Berklee's Red Room @ Club 939, Thursday, October 10, 7 pm. Joining Sergeant will be special guest and Grammy winner Ted Nash, pianist Jeb Patton, and local heavy-hitters Robert Gullotti (drums) and Gregory Ryan (bass).

Smolder is a journey of fire in which Sergeant's artfully arranged standards and originals combine to create a story of flame--from ignition to extinction. DownBeat's Bobby Reed raves, "Sergeant's training as an actress and classical vocalist enable her to craft moments of engaging drama, whether she's seductively sliding into a note with a near-whisper, delivering a breathy revelation or belting out a lyric with full-throated muscularity... This elegant album illustrates what can happen when admirable ambition is paired with vocal vibrancy..."

A native of Manchester-by-the-Sea, and graduate of Brandeis University, Sergeant performed at the Huntington Stage Company and Lyric Stage Company of Boston-- singled out by The Boston Globe as "especially entertaining"-- as she honed her talents on a diversity of material from British farce and Gilbert & Sullivan to rock opera. After graduating in 2005, she left Boston to seek her fortunes in NYC.

Over the next decade, Sergeant transformed herself from stage actress to jazz vocalist and composer with two DownBeat lauded albums to her name, while cultivating an exciting second career as a certified sommelier at some of the top restaurants in Manhattan (Gotham Bar & Grill, The Grill). Extending her creative spirit to this new vocation, in 2004 she developed her own wine with Ted Nash, Two Notes, a Bordeaux style poured at top jazz clubs in NYC (Dizzy's, Jazz Standard) that will also make its own debut on Boston area shelves this October.

Two Notes is a wine of passionate collaboration - fusing Kristen's wine expertise and Ted Nash's love of his native California (and of course, their mutual love of fine wine.) The current vintage, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc, is a Bordeaux lover's California wine -- both bold and finessed, and utterly distinctive, much like the music Boston audiences will hear on October 10.

In Sergeant's words, her life's work and partnerships are in "jazz and juice", two labors of love that she's eager to share the fruits of in her hometown this fall.

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