Clare Teal on stage at the Royal Hall

Growing up 15 minutes away from Harrogate in a village near Skipton, Clare Teal used to visit the “posh town with the posh tea room” as a child. Now she’s one of the headline acts appearing at the prestigious Harrogate International Festival. Trying to pin Clare Teal down isn’t easy. After she had returned from a week in Paris, we spoke to Clare in her car (her partner Muddy Field was driving) on her way to record a radio show with Pop Idol’s Michelle McManus. A few days later she will be interviewing Diana Krall for Radio 2.

As a child, Clare developed a fascination for jazz listening to her grandmother’s records. She grew up to present BBC Radio 2’s Big Band Special, Friday Night Is Music Night plus a host of other specialist music documentaries for radio and TV and to count the likes of Sir Michael Parkinson as a fan. Clare ‘accidentally’ turned to singing whilst studying for her music degree at Wolverhampton Polytechnic.

After leaving college like a lot of aspiring musicians she got a full time job. “My success didn’t happen over night. Nobody in the industry realised I was working 9 to 5 in advertising sales, then doing gigs at night. I suppose I was driven, I was determined, you have to be. And working in sales was incredibly useful to me. It was hard work but it taught me how to talk about money and business in general and also more importantly to handle rejection.”

Something that pays for a musician – Clare famously landed a multi-million pound contract with Sony records – virtually unheard of for a British jazz musician outside the Radio 1 demographic. It’s all quite remarkable considering she discovered her voice by serendipity. “It was when I was studying music; I had completely forgotten about an important clarinet exam and had 20 minutes to do something…anything, so formed the world’s worst piano trio and as my piano playing is less than impressive I had to sing to hold it all together. Thankfully nobody walked out covering their ears and I realised for the first time in my life that I could sing in front of people without going to pieces.” She had always loved jazz, but the fantastic response from her teachers was the turning point to focus her passion on singing.

Clare’s business sense meant she knew her worth – she sang with jazz bands but always demanded to be paid – she never gigged for free. It was after coming second in a national contest to find the next Billie Holiday that she got her big break.

By her second album, Orsino’s Songs, Sir Michael Parkinson became a fan, playing it frequently on his radio show and inviting her to perform on his TV chat show in 2003. In 2005 and in 2006 she was British jazz vocalist of the year. The Times dubbed her ‘Britain’s most successful female jazz singer’. And Parkinson gushed she was, “Wonderful. Worth raving about.”

The gig included a unique version of 'On Ilkley Moor Ba Tat'

“Michael has been hugely supportive of me, and he’s done a great deal in supporting up and coming talent and musicians. I was very lucky to have his backing and support; he’s a great music lover. I do still see him – we go for tea now and then and yes I guess that I can count him as a friend. We’re actually performing together at the Glasgow Jazz Festival in June.”

What, he’s singing? “No,” she laughs, “thank God! He’s presenting.”

Clare has performed with many jazz legends including John Dankworth and Cleo Laine, and counts Ella Fitzgerald as her all time hero as well as her ultimate influence – Cole Porter – to whom her own writing has been compared.

On her third album, The Road Less Travelled, she was working with the music producer Tony Platt – of Rolling Stones and Bob Marley fame – and sang a duet with fellow jazz star, Jamie Cullum, an old friend of Clare’s. Is she going to the wedding? (Sophie Dahl confirmed her engagement to Cullum recently on the Jonathon Ross show.) “We’ve not got an invite yet! But I’m thrilled for him, he’s such a talent.”

It seems to be part of the make-up of hugely successful musicians and personalities like Clare – to be incredibly driven and hard working. There’s some real Yorkshire grit at work. “And I have a hugely supportive partner, which makes a big difference.” Clare added. She lives with her partner Muddy in Bath. Clare met Muddy at a charity event and they have lived, worked and toured together for a decade. Her personal and working life are intertwined – which might explain the good vibrations Clare Teal puts out in person, as well as on stage; her work is her passion, and unlike some artists she hasn’t had to make compromises in her relationship. The fact the pair met at a charity event says a lot about Clare’s spirit. When she found out Yorkshire Cancer Research were supporting her event at this year’s Festival, she was genuinely thrilled: “That’s fantastic! It really is. I think during the credit crunch too its crucial charities and communities work together and support each other, so for such a great Festival like Harrogate to work with this massively important charity is amazing. It’s an awful truth but cancer will affect us directly or someone we know at some point in our lives. It really means a lot that it’s a charity like that supporting the show.”

Clair Chadwick, Head of Marketing and Fundraising for Yorkshire Cancer Research said they were delighted to be supporting a number of events at this year’s Harrogate International Festival: “In particular, Yorkshire artist Clare Teal has resonance because she’s Yorkshire born and bred,” Miss Chadwick said. “All proceeds from this partnership will enable us to continue to fund world renowned research into the causes and cures of cancer at universities and their associated teaching hospitals across Yorkshire”.

Clare with event supporters, Yorkshire Cancer Research

Would Britain’s most famous jazz singer ever move home to Yorkshire? “Work commitments keep me in Bath and I’m very settled there now, I need to be close to London.” But Yorkshire still has a huge place in her heart. Her roots, like many Yorkshire successes, gave her a strong work ethic. Combined with her passion for music, her relentless drive has catapulted her to success while keeping her northern feet firmly on the ground. Teal has famously said in the past: “It’s very levelling because you’re never not from Yorkshire.”

Her sense of humour that resonates on radio and stage has been compared to the quintessential northern comic, Victoria Wood. Humour, Clare said, is crucial to her – it has helped her career and professional life. “I love what I do and I find a lot of things funny – I think it’s only right that the audience should be in on the joke,” she laughed. Her 2008 album is aptly called Get Happy. The Guardian music critic John Fordham put Teal’s appeal down to the fact she still retains that ‘enduring devotion to swing’ and a rosy romantic approach that she demonstrated as a child, dreaming about being Ginger Rogers in the arms of Fred Astaire whirling down the aisles of Keighley shopping centre.

Teal has an infectious upbeat love of music, and it seems, of life. It seems fitting that the one song that she said she’d pass on to her kids as one of the most influential in her life is not a Fitzgerald track or even Cole Porter melody, but Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys: “My biggest influences? Oh Cole Porter absolutely – but I think the one song that stops me in my tracks every time is ‘Good Vibrations’ by the Beach Boys. Bryan Wilson’s pocket symphony is one of the most inspiring, innovative joyous demonstrations of all that is good about music.”