Le Baiser Salé (“The Salty Kiss”) is one of the best-known jazz clubs in Paris. The snug 74-capacity venue on Rue des Lombards in the city’s heart has been entertaining music lovers for decades, hosting jam sessions, showcasing rising talents, welcoming big names on the downlow.

Among whom, and a regular face since 2010, is beloved French singer-songwriter Flore Benguigui.

Flore. Jazz-trained. Jazz-obsessed. Blessed with a voice, soft and captivating, resonant and strong, made for swooning to. Flanked by her longtime musician friends, double-bassist Pierre-François Maurin, drummer Maxime Mary and Charles Tois on upright piano, Flore delivers tunes from the past with a nod to the present and a wink to the future, stirring the retro-modern vibe further with analogue synths.

“I can dream in the silence, I can speak when I please, and I know that the river comprehends what she sees,” sings Flore in her up-close and personal way. “For she’s more understanding than a man.”

A recovered gem originally written in the late 1950s by cult American singer-songwriter Margo Guryan, “More Understanding Than A Man” is the debut single from Flore Benguigui & The Sensible Notes, a band whose jazz chops will be flexed with the unveiling of new music in 2026.

Recorded together – that is, with all the musicians in the same room – in a studio in Pigalle, the project also features a female clarinetist, an all-female horn section and two female sound engineers.

“I’ve always been interested in the position of women in music and specifically, women in jazz music,” says Flore, 33, a literature and cinema studies graduate whose songwriting for the otherwise all-male L’Impératrice – the Parisian electropop sensations that she fronted, magnetically, for nine years – often explored themes of feminism and self-empowerment and parodied misogyny.

Furthermore, as the host of “Cherchez La Femme” (“Look For the Woman”), a monthly feminist podcast with associated events, Flore increasingly knew it was time to step into her truth and reclaim her life. In September 2024 she officially announced via Instagram that she was leaving the band.

“Being in this supportive feminist world really helped me see that I was immersed in a very toxic masculine environment, which, with the constant rhythm of touring, composing and performing, wasn’t that easy to acknowledge on my own,” she says.

“But playing jazz at Le Baiser Salé, a club that is like my second home, has always revitalised me.” A smile. “I have such a connection to these players. Jazz gives me so much joy.”

The eldest of four sisters raised in a village in rural Provence, Flore was just 16, busking with her ukelele on the cobbled streets of Avignon, when she met fellow street performers Maurin and Tois.

“They were a bit older than me, and playing this clever, intriguing music with all these free improvised solos,” says Flore. “At that point I had studied cello and classical piano, but I didn’t know anything about jazz, and with my quiet voice I wasn’t even sure there was a place for me in music.”

“But as I started hanging out with these two musicians, I discovered jazz icons like Chet Baker, this amazing trumpet player with such a soft, nuanced singing voice. I learned the standards. The Songbook. I fell for Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole.”

They formed a trio, gigged at restaurants and private parties. Later, with [Maxime] Mary on drums and percussion, and while Flore was enrolled in jazz studies at a Paris conservatoire, they created their elegant, effervescent tribute to Nat King Cole (“His early songs in particular have such swing and groove”) which they staged at Le Baiser Salé – and which has run, on-and-off, for the past 15 years.

_{Gallery photos: Manou Milon. Click to enlarge.}

“More Understanding Than A Man” is a song whose lyrics – about the idea that the natural world is more emotionally supportive than a man – feel almost transgressive, given the times in which they were written. Imbued with a sort of acerbic insouciance, this proto-feminist ode feels like a gift to Flore. Especially since, like Guryan herself, it nearly faded from history.

“Margo Guryan is an inspiration,” Flore says. “I knew a bit about her work in pop in the 1960s, but she was very secretive, mostly just releasing demos. I found out that she started out studying jazz, working with people like Ornette Coleman, then toured with big jazz men including her ex-husband, [trombonist] Bob Brookmeyer, which she hated because people would comment on her soft vocals. She stopped performing and stayed in the shadows, writing songs that would be covered by other people. Some of them, like ‘Sunday Morning’ were big hits. She had a way with harmonic codes, and as a lyricist she knew that irony and humour are powerful weapons.”

The single’s B-side – a sublime rendition of “Dis, Quand Reviendras-Tu?” (“Tell Me, When Will You Return?”) – has been similarly chosen for the way it flips the script. First sung in 1962 by its co-writer, French performing legend Barbara, the song tells of a woman awaiting the return of her sailor lover.

“The cool thing is that it is so much more than that,” says Flore. “She is asking when her lover is coming back as everything is so bleak and horrible. But by the end she’s like, ‘You know, I’m not going to wait forever. If you don’t come back, I will find another sun to keep me warm.'”

Stepping into her truth. Celebrating her freedom.

This, then, is Flore Benguigui & The Sensible Notes – joyously, unapologetically jazz.

Flore Benguigui & The Sensible Notes’ debut single “More Understanding Than A Man” b/w “Dis, Quand Reviendras-Tu?” will be released on 7-inch vinyl on December 5, 2025, available here at Everything Jazz. More music will be coming in 2026.

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Jane Cornwell is an Australian-born, London-based writer on arts, travel and music for publications and platforms in the UK and Australia, including Songlines and Jazzwise. She’s the former jazz critic of the London Evening Standard.

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_{Header image: Flore Benguigui. Photo: Manou Milon.}