Imany
Molly Johnson

With her deep voice, which confidently blends a soul from the depths of time and a powerful and luminous folk, the interpreter of “You Will Never Know” and “Don’t Be So Shy” goes beyond genres and borders: “I am sure that there is a force much bigger than us, and that we are only transmission channels.” But what is this force that Imany refers to? In her case, we imagine it is a powerful and creative force, the one which pushed her to record her last album, The Shape of a Broken Heart, which revealed her talent in 2011 Three albums and a few gold records later, the singer with Comorian origins, who grew up in the South-East of France before pursuing a modelling career in New York, comes back with a determination stronger than ever. Convinced that women have a fundamental right to be angry, she wrote and recorded her fourth album, Women Deserve Rage, as a manifesto of emancipation and rebirth. Arising from a vital need to reclaim her life, it brings the voice of an artist who chose to be free again. “I made a sweet and strange dream of a rest given by the angels so that we could start all over again”, she repeats as a mantra in one of her last songs. So, let’s dream with her about this rest and let’s replay her songs, if not our entire life, with all our heart.

Line-up :

• Imany (vocals)
• Julie Varlet (trumpet)
• Jules Boittin (trombone)
• Stefane Goldman (guitar)
• Sandra Cipolat (keyboards)
• Ludovic Bruni (bass)
• Bili Langhoff (drums)

It was back in the beginning of 00s. An amazing and powerful voice, full of blues and rock, established itself as a reference on the jazz scene. This voice came from Toronto, taking over all the big music festivals on the other side of the Atlantic and in Europe. Molly Johnson, her mezzo-soprano tessitura and her groove captivated us, among other things, with the album Another Day in which she made a unique version of “Summertime”. Molly Johnson is comfortable when doing covers of classics, for example when paying tribute to Billie Holiday, but she also differentiates herself from the others by her writing skills. Her poetic and committed lyrics (she created the Kumbaya festival in aid of people living with HIV) transcends time, just like her voice. There is a form of timelessness in her and all her records. Last September, she released a three title EP, All I See. Those three songs are marked by the presence of a Hammond organ and driven by a choir. It might be a foretaste of her next album and her performance at Jazz à Vienne. When Molly Johnson suspends the time, you just have to relax, listen and quiver.