Cécile McLorin Salvant
Released September 29, 2017
Grammy Award Best Jazz Vocal Album 2018
DownBeat Album of the Year Critics Poll
Jazzwise Album of the Year for 2017
The Guardian 5-Star Review
2018 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album
YouTube: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lBJQWdclbrgvT4_z6n8quAz3yqbzWh9Ug
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/2c9Oa8uygtwLDMpWcklVay?si=Aq_n4tJLRtGISWDrOoqIwA
About:
Shortly following Cécile McLorin Salvant’s emergence on the music scene, New York Times critic Stephen Holden stated, “As Cécile McLorin Salvant spun songs into a brilliant silk tapestry, I thought, if anyone can extend the lineage of the Big Three — Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald — it is this 23-year-old virtuoso.” Downbeat added emphasis to Holden’s sentiment by awarding Cécile top position in an unprecedented 4 categories in its 2014 Annual Critics Poll. And Wynton Marsalis commented “you get a singer like this once in a generation or two.”
With her 2016 Grammy Award winning album For One to Love, Cécile McLorin Salvant revealed that she is not just a sublime vocalist, but a supremely gifted storyteller and composer as well. Cécile is being embraced by music lovers at major festivals and clubs throughout the world. Her remarkable voice and striking ability to inhabit the emotional space and turn every song she performs into theater make her an artist of consequence to be celebrated and enjoyed.
Track Listing:
Disc 1
1. And Yet (Cécile McLorin Salvant / Paul Sikivie) 1:06
2. Devil May Care (Bob Dorough / Terrell Kirk) 6:56
3. Mad About the Boy (Noël Coward) 6:52
4. Sam Jones’ Blues (Al Bernard / J. Russel Robinson / Roy Turk) 2:59
5. More (Cécile McLorin Salvant) 3:33
6. Never Will I Marry (Frank Loesser) 4:02
7. Somehow I Never Could Believe (Langston Hughes / Kurt Weill) 9:55
8. If a Girl Isn’t Pretty (Bob Merrill / Jule Styne) 2:55
9. Red Instead (Cécile McLorin Salvant) 0:34
10. Runnin’ Wild (Arthur Gibbs / Joe Grey / Leo Wood) 1:39
11. The Best Thing for You (Would Be Me) (Irving Berlin) 7:08
Disc 2
1. You’re My Thrill (Sidney Clare / Jay Gorney) 4:34
2. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was (Lorenz Hart / Richard Rodgers) 6:29
3. Tell Me What They’re Saying Can’t Be True (Buddy Johnson) 5:29
4. Nothing Like You (Bob Dorough) 3:49
5. You’ve Got to Give Me Some (Spencer Williams) 6:11
6. The Worm (Cécile McLorin Salvant / Paul Sikivie) 1:03
7. My Man’s Gone Now (George Gershwin / Ira Gershwin / DuBose Heyward) 6:27
8. Let’s Face the Music and Dance (Irving Berlin) 6:55
9. Si J’étais Blanche (Bobby Falk / Leo Lelièvre / Henri Varna) 5:14
10. Fascination (Cécile McLorin Salvant / Paul Sikivie) 1:27
11. Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues (Ida Cox) 6:50
12. You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me (Al Dubin / Harry Warren) 9:53
Personnel:
Cécile McLorin Salvant: vocals
Aaron Diehl: piano
Paul Sikivie: double bass (string arranger, composer)
Lawrence Leathers: drums
Catalyst Quartet: strings
Sullivan Fortner: piano
Live Recording: Village Vanguard on September 9th, 10th and 11th, 2016 – New York, NY
Studio Recording: DiMenna Center for Classical Music on December 13th, 2016 – New York, NY
Producers: Al Pryor and Cecile McLorin Salvant
Executive Production: Gretchen Valade
Production Management: Will Wakefield
Record Engineering: Damon Whittemore
Record Engineering, Mix Engineering: Todd Whitelock
Review:
As she showed on her auspicious 2010 release WomanChild, the singer is really not one to shirk a challenge. In what is the defining moment of this impressive live performance spread over two discs she looks up at two of the towers of the Great American Songbook – Gershwin’s ‘My Man’s Gone Now’ and Berlin’s ‘Let’s Face The Music And Dance’ – and scales the heights set by some of her predecessors with a poise and self-possession beyond her 27 summers. Indeed, the impression of a wizened old soul in a young body is greatly reinforced by the wide range of emotional nuance, from desolation to resignation via irony and devil-may-care abandon, that Salvant conveys in her modulations of phrase, some of which are sober and some bold, like an arched eyebrow by way of her voice. That the recording took place at no less historic a venue than the Village Vanguard lends a certain gravitas to the occasion, and the inclusion of a string section on several complementary studio tracks simply dignifies proceedings further. Retaining the able acoustic trio led by pianist Aaron Diehl that graced her previous releases, Salvant negotiates a largely standards-based repertoire with none of the trying-too-hard emphasis that can blight young pretenders. She sometimes, slightly à la Billie, skims the slow pace of introspective spoken word, as if she understands the homoerotic sub-text of Noel Coward’s ‘Mad About The Boy’ and its tragedy in an era of criminalised homosexuality, just as much as she sees the relevance of ‘Si J’etais Blanche’ (‘If I Were White’), a song made famous in France by Josephine Baker in the 1930s, to a modern America bitterly divided along racial fault-lines. Salvant’s ability to find such strong echoes of the present in the music of the past and invest each lyric with immense strength of character mark her out as an artist who has a grip on cultural history to match a talent rooted in the now.
Kevin Le Gendre (Jazzwise)
