Viktoria Tolstoy - Smile Love and Spice (1994)

The Swedish singer Viktoria Tolstoy was born in the small town of Sigtuna, near Stockholm, in 1974, but she has Russian blood in her veins. Her great-grandfather, the son of the world-famous writer Leo Tolstoy, grew up in Tsarist, Russia. Viktoria’s childhood and adolescence were spent in Uppsala. Her father, a Swedish jazz musician, took his daughter’s musical education into his own hands, and introduced her to the world of jazz. In the mid 1990’s, while performing at a Stockholm club, she was discovered by a record company which offered her a recording contract.

"Smile, Love and Spice” her debut album, for which her father wrote several of the tracks, immediately attracted the attention of the circle of leading Swedish jazz musicians, such as Arne Domnerus, Putte Wickman and Svante Thuresson.