When our website stumbled upon an album called At Pizza Express - Live In London, back in 2024, by the young American Jazz singer and songwriter Anaïs Reno, we were all amazed, at Bluebird Reviews, by the class, talent and elegance of the then 20-years-old N.Y. based artist.
A rising star that strongly impressed everyone since the beginning of her career, when Reno, in 2021, delivered a stunning studio album called Lovesome Thing: Anaïs Reno Sings Ellington & Strayhorn, this highly talented Jazz singer showed already on a very early stage of her artistic life the love and respect that Reno has for the giants of the genre, might they be singers, songwriters or composers.
Now, with a brand new studio album just released and called Lady Of The Lavender Mist, Anaïs Reno makes, in our website's opinion, another very important step forward in her already fulgid career to date.
The album's title-track was, according to the Artist Herself, the starting point in the making of Reno's new record, when the singer-songwriter was delving, on a train journey, into the music catalogue of one of her greatest idols, Duke Ellington.
Whilst Lady Of The Lavender Mist was conceived and released by Ellington solely as an instrumental composition, the title of this particular piece kept on buzzing in Reno's head, offering the American artist the opportunity to lay down lyrics to combine with the piece, taking as inspiration an imaginary lady that would forever go unnoticed behind said Lavender Mist, in the hope of finding a soul saviour that sadly, will never eventually come.
This very introspective and sophisticated piece of songwriting provided Reno the idea of recording in studio a few more Jazz classics of other authors to be added to Ellington's composition, chosen carefully by the American artist as a sort of diary in music of what the last 12 months felt for Anaïs Reno, on a personal level.
Lady Of The Lavender Mist became, in that way, a sort of a concept album, for this extraordinary Jazz singer, who chose to include, within the album's song list, Jazz traditionals like Thelonious Monk's Round Midnight or The Autumn Leaves (the latter sang half in French and half in English, as a sort of homage to that great French singer that was Yves Montand) with less known numbers, like When Lights Are Low, a 1936 tune originally composed by Benny Carter and Spencer Williams, for example, in a way that both musical arrangements and lyrics of each piece would work together as part of a journal of Reno's last year life in music.
As a singer, this album sees Anaïs Reno in stellar form; despite the fact that only a year has gone by, since Bluebird Reviews had the privilege to see Reno performing live in the UK capital, this American singer's overall vocal performance seems to have now acquired, in her brand new album, an even more impressive power, strength and swagger, showing an artist in total control and enormous (perfectly justified) confidence in her wonderful voice.
Supported by a trio of very skilled studio musicians, guitarist Peter Bernstein, drummer Joe Farnsworth and David Wong on bass guitar, Anaïs Reno tiptoes gracefully and very elegantly through the whole album switching from Swing to Jazz, to Vocalese with an almost effortless approach, reinstating the American Jazz singer as one of the most gifted artist of the contemporary Worldwide Jazz scene.
Lady Of The Lavender Mist is an album to love and cherish more and more with each passing listen, by closing your eyes while listening to it and letting Anaïs Reno to take you in her own world, a world where Jazz, through Reno's powerful voice, becomes true magic.
Lady Of The Lavender Mist is out now and it is available to be purchased via Apple Music
