Stella Cole to Perform at NYC's Café Carlyle; Releases New EP

Stella Cole has released My Funny Valentine, a 3 track EP out via Decca Records US. Cole also revealed the dates for her second residency at NYC's Café Carlyle, running March 12-16, 2026.

Following her take on the Carpenters' "Merry Christmas, Darling," her new album It's Magic, and a TODAY Show performance, the Hollywood Reporter Person of Interest has worked again with Grammy-winner Matt Pierson (Samara Joy, Brad Mehldau) and the great arranger Alan Broadbent on My Funny Valentine, celebrating the major standards of the Great American Songbook in a way that's fresh and new, yet faithful to the time-honored traditions of this remarkable music.

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's iconic "My Funny Valentine," is about loving somebody not just in spite of their perceived faults, but possibly even because of them. More than most interpreters, Stella makes us realize that in loving delineating such faults - if they even should be called tat - the singer is not only revelling in the humanity of the other, but expressing her own vulnerability as well.

With "You Go to My Hed," Stella delivers the Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie lyric with a directness and openness that recalls Sinatra's classic 1945 reading - a superlative take on perhaps the first great song to use alcohol as a metaphor. On the track, Stella is backed by a trio of Alan Broadbent along with her regular band members Michael Migliore (bass) and Hank Allen-Barfield (drums).

"The Nearness of You" is in a more intimate setting of just Broadbent and Migliore accompanying Stella, as she embraces Ned Washington's narrative of delineating his list of things that don't and do excite or enchant her (the "pale moon," the "soft lights"), concluding that it's the sheer proximity of the loved one that matters most. With this package, Stella shows off her continuing mastery of this music; now, more than ever, this world is truly her oyster.