Anaïs Reno, Lady of the Lavender Mist

If there’s a drawback to being an accomplished, award-winning jazz singer by one’s mid-teens like the transcendent, emotionally intuitive, wit and wisdom filled Anaïs Reno, it’s the likelihood that all praise will be qualified by “for someone her age.”

At 21, a few years after the release of her dazzling 2021 debut Lovesome Thing: Anaïs Reno Sings Ellington & Strayhorn, she continues to lay the groundwork as one of her generation’s premiere vocal jazz virtuosos with the equally compelling Lady of the Lavender Mist.

With both sweetly sensuous and briskly swinging arrangements, the collection finds the multiple award winning, NYC raised singer and her mesmerizing, rangy voice – accompanied by guitarist Peter Bernstein and the rhythm section of David Wong (bass) and Joe Farnsworth (drums) strolling amiably through familiar aspects of the Great American Songbooks in unique ways – like performing her half torchy, half breezy version of “Les Feuilles Mortes/The Autumn Leaves” in both English and its original French, drawing on Carmen McRae’s take on “’Round Midnight” to fashion her own version expressing the song’s mixed sense of desperation and hope and shifting tempos quickly throughout “Kiss and Run.”

Keeping the Duke Ellington vibe from her debut album flowing, Anaïs’ enigmatic album title comes from a tender Ellington ballad she put her own poetic, melancholy-tinged lyrics to, relating to her personal strife at the time. She complements that with a seductive twist on another Ellington gem, “Take Love Easy,” which features a gorgeous guest violin solo by the singer’s mother, classical violinist Juliet Kurtzman, who co-he produced the album with Anaïs.