An Artist Of The Songwriting World

Some people want to quit whatever it is that they're doing at present to become writers. Well, Kazuo Ishiguro quit writing (for the moment only, one hopes) to try his hand at an earlier obsession: songwriting. He's just written the lyrics for four songs on Breakfast on the Morning Tram, the seventh solo album by the London-based jazz singer Stacey Kent. And how was the experience? "I'm used to writing novels," he admits. "I sat down and wrote what I thought was a normal-length song. It's only when they sang a rough version of what they had that I realized, 'My God, this is an awful lot of lyrics!' "