“Introducing Juanita Cohen Smith” is the first album released by Tel Aviv-based label Slil Records and is a time-cooked diamond over 70 years in the making - the first recording of a showbiz veteran who has redefined the Great American Songbook as her own set of intimate spells to cast over a captivated audience.

In 2021 Yonatan Levi and Omri Gondor visited Juanita at her home in the port of Eilat, for what was meant to be a single session on her Grand Piano. As Juanita slowly warmed up to the idea of recording, her entertainer instincts, trained on a whole lifetime of supperclub events and including an endless list of songs to recall - took over. The result was a 5 day session, with 13 hours of music recorded from her legacy of jazz history. The selection of songs chosen for the record, known from the repertoires of Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday are transmuted by her playing, turning into personal conversations with the listener, stripped of their grandeur and repackaged as tiny gifts from the heart. Yonatan and Omri stayed for these extra days, instinctively knowing they were documenting something vital and historic. released March 15, 2024