Mina Agossi: Red Eyes (2012)

C. MICHAEL BAILEY,

C. Michael Bailey

Senior Contributor since 1997

...wants to know if Gene Harris is playing "Summertime" in Heaven...

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Published: May 12, 2012

Track review of "Red House"

The French Classical Naive label continues its campaign into jazz with Mina Agossi's Red Eyes. Her second recording for the label after 2010's Just Like A Lady, Red Eyes finds the French singer staking out her rightful claim on what only can be described as the furthest molecule on the cutting edge of jazz vocals, before everything turns to infinity. While it is true that Agossi's vocal style still colors within the lines of conventional jazz wisdom, she erases those same lines as she passes them, leaving nothing but her version of things. So much for metaphysical semantics...

Agossi has no fear of grabbing material from anywhere she chooses. She is not the first to cover Jimi Hendrix, but she may be the most compelling. Her brief three-minute survey of Hendrix's "Red House," features tenor saxophone by one Archie Shepp, making her performance both solid and ethereal, organic and synthetic, and potential and kinetic. Bassist Eric Jacot lays down a "Crossroads" groove courtesy of Eric Clapton, while guitarist Phil Reptil adds piquant accents to Agossi's probing vocals. This is not the 12-bar blues of your parents; it is not even the your jazz vocals. This is simply the next thing.

Personnel: Mina Agossi: vocals; Stéphane Guery: guitar; Phil Reptil: guitars; Sue Richardson: trumpet; Eric Jacot: bass guitar; Ichiro Onoe: drums; Archie Shepp: tenor saxophone.

Record Label: Naive Records