Lovesome Thing:
​Anaïs Reno Sings Ellington & Strayhorn

Take a Sneak Peek

Listen below to two different tracks from the incredible debut album of this young artist!

Moon Indigo – Anais Reno
Take the A Train – Anais Reno

Love What You Hear?

This is the extraordinary recording debut of jazz phenomenon Anaïs Reno, who made it in 2020 at the age of 16. Reno has already won accolades for her dedication to the Great American Songbook. She recently received the Julie Wilson Award, and in 2019 won the Mabel Mercer Foundation competition for high school students.

Living in New York City, Reno began singing when she was eight, and since the age of 10 has performed with a notable array of jazz and cabaret artists at venues including Birdland Jazz Club, the National Arts Club, the Players Club and Carnegie Hall. She has had three solo shows at Feinstein’s 54 Below with Billy Stritch and Tedd Firth (the first of them at age 13), and two at Birdland with Stritch and Brian Charette. Reno is currently a senior drama major at Manhattan’s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

For this album she has chosen 12 tunes by two master writers: Duke Ellington (1899-1974) and Billy Strayhorn 1915-67), creators of some of the most challenging and sophisticated material in the Great American Songbook. Reno combines beloved hits such as “Mood Indigo,” “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Lush Life” and “Caravan” with lesser-known but equally memorable tunes like “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing” and “It’s Kind of Lonesome Out Tonight,” all backed by a stellar group of jazz musicians led by pianist Emmet Cohen, who also did the arrangements with Reno.

“I have a very personal relationship with these songs,” says Reno. “Somehow I believe that the music of Ellington & Strayhorn understands me. This is why I want to honor it.”

Acclaimed jazz historian Will Friedwald, who has written the liner notes for the 12-page CD booklet, comments that “At 16, Anaïs achieved what precious few adults ever accomplish: namely, to actually enhance our appreciation and enjoyment of the Ellington-Strayhorn canon.”

“Whether working together or separately, the two of them were always on the same page, both metaphorically and literally. And now, so is Anaïs Reno.”

Tracks

  1. Caravan
  2. Mood Indigo
  3. Still in Love
  4. Chelsea Bridge/A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing
  5. I’m Just a Lucky So and So
  6. It’s Kind of Lonesome Out Tonight
  7. Day Dream
  8. I Ain’t Got Nothin’ but the Blues
  9. All Roads Lead Back to You
  10. U.M.M.G. (Upper Manhattan Medical Group)
  11. Lush Life
  12. Take the “A” Train