JUST as Rod Stewart has achieved a kind of renaissance with The Great American Songbook series, Laura Fygi is making her own mark on the classics with this collection of 14 cover versions. But far from being a series of well-known French numbers such as C'est Si Bon, she sings mainly French versions of well-known English-language songs such as Cole Porter's Day and Night (which becomes Tout La Jour, Tout La Nuit) and Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade (Dansez Maintenant). There are a number of collaborations on the album, most notably with Stochelo Rosenberg from the Rosenberg Trio with whom she has toured. His contribution to the wilder nocturnal strains of Caravane add an authentic flamboyance to this number.

Fygi cites Gypsy Jazz maestro Django Reinhardt and Stephan Grappelli as influences on the sound of Rendez-Vous. Both are stalwarts of the Hot Club de France, a 1930s jazz club that allowed performers to sing international songs in French at a time when performing in English was banned. Fygi's francophone approach to the classics on Rendez-Vous is a homage to this period of French musical history.

Bilingual, Fygi was brought up speaking French and Dutch. She is big in her native Netherlands and seems to be slowly growing on the rest of the world - she's long had a fan base here in Asia and is due to tour later this year.

Fans of Fygi will be used to her recording non-English songs. As far back as 1992's Bewitched, on which she included Les Feuilles Mortes, she has dabbled in foreign songs and has included various others across the years including Noel a Paris on 2004's Christmas album, The Very Best Time of the Year.

Dansez Maintenant sounds like it was always a French song as does Pour te Plaire, which has its roots in That's All - another American classic. Rod Stewart's The Great American Songbook Volume II is subtitled As Time Goes By after the Herman Hupfeld classic, which here with Fygi becomes Le Temps qui Passe, and rather successfully too.

Not only are many of the songs sung in a language new to them, but the arrangements are also largely original, led by Fygi's pianist and regular band to suit her luscious, deep, laid-back vocals. This means that classic songs suddenly creep up on you unannounced such as Fly Me to the Moon (here Volons Vers La Lune), which is recorded as a ballad rather than the Sinatra swing that we are used to. There's no mistaking the Kurt Weill classic Mack the Knife (La Complainte de Mackie) when the bass strikes up that famous rhythm, but Fygi's band does its best to riff around the well-known structure and finish the song with a neat and unexpected little ragtime flourish.

Assuming her fans stick with her through this linguistic experimentation, it would be interesting to see her go further into the American songbook and also to unearth some more original French songs to truly carve out a recognisable niche for herself on the international soloists circuit.