Jazz singer leaves it late

Clare Teal never sung in front of anyone until she hit 21. The songstress did not have the confidence to demonstrate her exceptional voice until it was absolutely necessary.

Now she has a multi-million pound recording deal with Sony Records and is this year's British Jazz Awards' Best Vocalist.

Her voice has been championed by the likes of jazz fan Michael Parkinson, as she twice appeared as a guest on his TV show after he heard her rendition of California Dreamin'. Teal's own compositions, like the recent Road Less Travelled, sung with Jamie Cullum, are wowing the jazz world.

The decisive moment came when, as a clarinettist, she was studying music at Wolverhampton University.

"At university I had this exam that I'd completely forgotten about," she says. "Luckily it was on-site. This guy popped his head round the door and said, Remember your practical in 20 minutes'.

"I didn't have my clarinet with me. My friend Andy was in the next practice room. I said, What are we going to do?' "There was a song we had been messing around with: him on the guitar and me on the piano. So we said we'd do three jazz standards. I thought, I'm going to have to sing because I'm not all that great on the piano'.

"It was so funny because I'd got my best grades ever. Singing in public felt fantastic. I never played the clarinet again."

But it was only in her late 20s that Ms Teal began to take her career in music seriously.

"I fell back into music when I was 27," she says. "I had been doing the office grind, trying to pay off my student loans. Getting back into music means you have to do a lot of catch up. No-one's ever heard of you."

Luckily, a job in the media gave a determined Teal the negotiating skills she needed to get her name out there. "I'm a big believer in being proactive," she says. "When I was with Candid Records I was still working full-time. I started my music career when most pop people finish theirs. I was very disciplined "You have to see everything as a positive. It's really frightening leaving work. You have got to be focused you have got to be able to pay your bills."

Teal recommended Jamie Cullum to her first label, Candid Records. The two of them, along with jazz stalwart Stacey Kent, became the label's three flagship names.

That was until the former two were picked up by the music industry's big boys. Firstly, Jamie Cullum was signed to Universal in April 2003. A year later, after a bidding war between Sony and Universal, Teal was signed by the former.

"When Jamie Cullum came along it was almost like a race," recalls Teal. "I didn't mind. All it meant was that the three of our profiles went up. There's a healthy competition in so much as you have to create your own luck.

"When I hit 30, it was the same year that Jamie Cullum got the big deal. I thought, Oh well, never mind. I'm doing really well. It doesn't matter. I'm over 30 now nothing's going to happen'.

"When I got the deal, I remember thinking that not looking like a size-eight model and pop princess didn't matter. They chose me specifically because of my voice and personality. I did chuckle."

And the singer, being the way she is, sees the positive side of being a more mature solo artist.

"Being that bit older and making a career from music enabled me to make my own choices," she says. "If they Sony asked me to do something, I would have been perfectly happy to have said no, if it meant that I wasn't able to live my life the way I wanted to.

"I had more confidence because of my age."

Teal lives in Bath with her writing partner and friend, Muddy Field. Yorkshire-born Teal is known just as much for her voice as for her cheery northern humour.

On stage she tells anecdotes about her new juicer, or the trials of moving house. It is not rehearsed. She is just good at chatting, making the stage, however big, feel very intimate.

Describing herself as a tomboy when she was younger, she refuses to wear fancy dresses, even for red-carpet events, and rubbishes stylists.

"I don't do dresses," she says categorically. "I like wearing nicely cut suits. It always had to be understated. It is all about the voice and the music.

"I'm not a clothes horse. I like to be well presented and look nice.

"It was so funny: when I signed to Sony they gave me a stylist. When I went to do Parky' for the second time, there was Muddy and David Carr, her manager, a stylist, a make-up person and three dresses to choose from. There was somebody hired just to do up my buttons. It was ridiculous. It was the entourage from hell."

But Teal still appreciates the advantages of being signed to a big label. "The great thing about having a major label behind you is that when you're making a record you can try all sorts of things," she says. "Before you would have a couple of days in the studio and that was it. And you'd hope to God that nothing went wrong.

"To be able to have 45 musicians on the last album is something I never dreamed would happen."

Although she was a music student, Teal feels it was her hours of practice as a child which was her real singing training.

"I was a bit of an anorak," she explains. "I was really shy. I used to play my jazz records in the attic. I would listen and repeat and listen and repeat and hone and hone to the line.

"You obviously wouldn't have the patience to do that when you got older. That really helped."

And, unlike most teenagers, she only ever listened to jazz, which is why, of course, that is the style she sings.

"The weird thing is, until I was in my late 20s I only listened to jazz," she says. "I was only influenced by what I was listening to. When I got to 30, I started listening to everything. I missed out on all the pop music. All of a sudden I became influenced by it. My writing format changed.

"It's now pop mixed together with jazz. It my music is just a mesh of styles, but obviously it's always going to be jazz-based."

Clare Teal performs at Regent's Park Open-Air Theatre, Inner Circle, Regent's Park, on Sunday, at 8pm. Tickets are £20.

To book tickets, visit the web site www.openairtheatre.com or call the box office on 08700 601801.