Choosing the sung line
Stella Cole has chosen a useful limit for a singer working with American standards. She does not sing scat, the improvisation in which syllables take the place of a song’s words. In her conversation with Steve Provizer for The Arts Fuse, she explains that the practice does not feel authentic to her. Imagination, her third studio album, released through Decca Records US on 30 October, gives that choice a concrete repertoire: nine songs, with piano, bass and drums beside the voice. I find the limit more revealing than the argument over whether to call her a jazz singer or a pop singer.[1], [2]
Provizer praises that restraint. His judgment belongs to the critic; Cole’s explanation belongs to the performer. The two positions meet at a musical decision but carry different weights. A singer chooses the resources she wants to use, while a critic evaluates the result. My starting point is the choice itself. It gives words and a pre-existing melody a central place in how this singer presents herself. The absence of scat leaves room for questions about the handling of a lyric, the length of a phrase and the relationship with accompaniment, rather than a demand for a particular display of improvisation.[2]
The titles make that discussion specific. Imagination includes Polka Dots and Moonbeams and It Had To Be You; I’m Old Fashioned and Till There Was You are also there. These are named works available to more than one singer, so the performer enters a repertoire already capable of comparison. Choosing one of them gives a listener a composition to recognize before assessing the new rendition. For me, that is the productive relationship between familiarity and interpretation: a shared song offers a stable point of reference while the responsibility for delivering its words remains with the person singing.[1]
Cole’s refusal to scat can therefore be read as an allocation of attention within that repertoire. The singer stays with means she regards as her own, rather than treating every available technique as an obligation. Another reading is more modest: this may simply be a personal preference with no larger programme behind it. That possibility leaves the musical question intact. A repertoire does not require every interpreter to make the same technical choices. Imagination gives Cole’s preference a place among specified songs and players, where it can be considered as a practice rather than elevated into a general rule for singing.[2], [1]
Three players beside the voice
Michael Kanan plays piano, Michael Migliore bass and Hank Allen-Barfield drums on Imagination. Provizer identifies them as Cole’s regular trio; the release announcement names the same players and instruments. That continuity matters to my reading because the singer’s decision sits within an ensemble. A vocal interpretation has an accompaniment, with responsibilities distributed among identifiable people. To name those people is to return the discussion from a solitary public image to the music’s working forces. Cole carries the words, while these three instrumental roles define the setting in which her choice is presented on this album.[1], [2]
Piano, bass and drums give a precise answer to the question of forces. They do not specify an arrangement note by note. Still, a named trio is enough to frame a useful comparison: what relationship does the singer establish with the musicians around a familiar song? That question keeps interpretation attached to the work being performed. It also makes the accompanists participants in the inquiry rather than a decorative list of credits. The interest is in the distribution of musical work around Cole’s sung line, with each instrument retaining its own place in the ensemble.[1]
The same nine songs appear in the lists for the release formats. The vinyl division puts As Time Goes By, Singin’ In The Rain, Imagination and Polka Dots and Moonbeams on the first side, with the remaining five on the second. I would keep the practical consequence modest: the repertoire survives the change of format. A listener choosing a format encounters the same selection of works. That stability gives the singer and trio, rather than an expanded or reduced song list, the central interpretive task. The album’s identity can be approached through its performers without inventing a separate musical proposition for each format.[1]
A singer’s route into the repertoire
Cole’s path helps explain why the genre argument is so persistent. Provizer traces it from musical theatre studies at Northwestern University to videos of standards made during the pandemic, then to work in New York venues. Her early ambitions pointed towards Broadway, but she describes finding the teaching approach there ill suited to her voice and connection with music. I read the turn to familiar songs as a choice of working material that could sustain a different relationship with singing. That is a performer’s problem: finding repertoire in which technique and the desire to communicate can belong to the same task.[2]
The release coincides with her Broadway engagement in Maybe Happy Ending at the Belasco Theatre, announced through 20 November. The album and the stage role place Cole in two different musical settings at once. One offers nine standards with her trio; the other places her within an existing theatrical production. For me, that coexistence makes a fixed genre identity less useful than attention to the task at hand. The relevant unit is the particular work and the forces carrying it. A singer can bring a recognisable set of preferences to more than one setting without making those settings interchangeable.[1]
Provizer also asks whether Cole’s reception points towards younger listeners embracing this repertoire. Cole describes audiences spanning generations and connects some young people’s interest with fatigue over automation and phone scrolling. That is her reading of the audience, and it deserves to remain attributed. I would bring the discussion back to the opportunity a standards album provides: a listener can return to a named song and compare how it is sung. Familiarity gives that encounter a point of entry. It does not require an entire generation to share one motive for entering, or turn a particular singer’s repertoire choice into a demographic verdict.[2]
Imagination is strongest as a proposition about where a singer places her attention. Nine named standards, three identified accompanists and an explicit decision about scat make that proposition concrete. The choice invites attention to the sung phrase within an ensemble, while leaving other singers free to find their own route through the same works. I value that room for difference. A repertoire remains available because performers can approach it with unequal resources and preferences. Cole’s place in it begins with the methods she chooses to use, and with the songs she entrusts to those methods.[1], [2]