Biography

A deeply personal journey through jazz standards, life experience, and reinvention: Elena Mîndru released Second Time Around on July 3rd 2026.

Award-winning jazz vocalist and composer Elena Mîndru presents Second Time Around, her seventh album as a leader and the first in her career devoted entirely to the repertoire of the American Songbook. Released digitally on July 3, 2026 through Siba Records, the album brings together nine jazz standards reimagined through contemporary arrangements, fearless improvisation, and a deeply personal artistic perspective.

While jazz standards have been part of Mîndru's concert repertoire throughout her career, Second Time Around marks the first time she has dedicated an entire recording project to the American Songbook. The album offered an opportunity to engage directly with the repertoire that shaped generations of jazz singers while simultaneously discovering new dimensions within her own artistry.

At first glance, Second Time Around is an album about jazz standards. At its heart, however, it is about what happens when life gives us a second chance: to love again, to trust again, to rebuild, to rediscover ourselves, and to tell familiar stories from a new perspective. How do we tell the same story with the same words, yet make it mean something new? That question became the starting point for Mîndru's artistic journey.

"The lyrics of these songs have remained the same for decades. What has changed is the life experience behind the voice singing them", says Mîndru. "I don't feel that I am a different person than I was twenty years ago. But I have lived. I have loved, built a family, pursued an international career, faced difficult choices, experienced successes and disappointments, questioned myself, learned to stand up for my own dignity, and discovered strengths I did not know I had. All of those experiences now live inside these songs."

Recorded with pianist Artturi Rönkä, bassist Oskari Siirtola, and drummer Anssi Tirkkonen, the album revisits beloved standards such as After You've Gone, Mean to Me, Three Little Words, I Cried For You, and A Song for You. The performances move freely between swing, Latin grooves, odd meters, spoken word passages, vocal loops, and contemporary harmonic colors while remaining firmly rooted in the jazz tradition.

Although the project originated in Mîndru's doctoral research at the Sibelius Academy, the album itself is first and foremost an artistic statement. Her research explores the tradition of the second chorus in jazz singing—a practice in which a vocalist repeats the same lyric while reshaping the melody through variation and improvisation. As the project developed, Mîndru began to see the concept as something larger than a musical technique.

"The more I explored the second chorus, the more I realized it reflects something deeply human. Throughout our lives, we revisit the same questions, relationships, hopes, and disappointments, yet we never return to them with exactly the same perspective. The second chorus became a metaphor for resilience, growth, and renewal."

The album's title track, The Second Time Around, captures this idea perfectly. Giving something a second chance, seeing it from a new perspective, rebuilding trust, rediscovering oneself, and finding the strength to continue after setbacks are themes that run throughout the recording.

"Many of these songs deal with love, longing, disappointment, hope, and the complexities of human relationships. As I worked with them, I found myself reflecting on my own experiences—on partnership and independence, trust and respect, family life and ambition, vulnerability and strength. The songs became mirrors, reflecting not only who I am, but also the journey that brought me here."

"In jazz, repetition is never really repetition. Every return is an opportunity for discovery. Life works much the same way. Sometimes we need to revisit something a second time around before we truly understand its meaning."

Tracklist

1. I Cried For You
2. After You've Gone
3. Mean to Me
4. At Sundown
5. A Song for You
6. Three Little Words
7. You're Crying
8. What a Little Moonlight Can Do
9. The Second Time Around