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Cecile Mclorin Salvant sings from new album in Sfjazz engagement / SFGATE

Cécile McLorin Salvant, is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as“a unique voice supported by an intelligence and  full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings”.

Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, theater, jazz, baroque and folkloric music. Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor.

Salvant won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010. She has received three consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for “The Window”, “Dreams and Daggers”, and “For One To Love”, and was nominated for the award in 2014 for her album “WomanChild”.

In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. Nonesuch Records released “Ghost Song” in March 2022, and has since gone onto receive two Grammy Nominations as well as appearing on a number of year end best lists for 2022. On March 24th, 2023 Nonesuch Records released the highly anticipated follow up - “Mélusine”, an album mostly sung in French, along with Occitan, English, and Haitian Kreyòl.  

Born and raised in Miami, Florida, of a French mother and Haitian father, she started classical piano studies at 5, sang in a children’s choir at 8, and started classical voice lessons as a teenager.

Salvant received a bachelor’s in French law from the Université Pierre-Mendes France in Grenoble while also studying baroque music and jazz at the Darius Milhaud Music Conservatory in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Salvant’s latest work, Ogresse, is a musical fable in the form of a cantata that blends genres (folk, baroque, jazz, country). Salvant wrote the story, lyrics, and music. It is arranged by Darcy James Argue for a thirteen-piece orchestra of multi-instrumentalists. Ogresse, both a biomythography and an homage to the Erzulie (as painted by Gerard Fortune) and Sara Baartman, explores fetishism, hunger, diaspora, cycles of appropriation, lies, othering, and ecology. It is in development to become an animated feature-length film, which Salvant will direct.

Salvant makes large-scale textile drawings. Her visual art can now be found at Picture Room in Brooklyn, NY.


Bay City News writes…Three-time Grammy-winning jazz singer Cecile McLorin Salvant's extraordinary musical talents are seemingly matched only by her fertile imagination. And both facets of her talent will be on display during her weekend set at SFJAZZ Center, 201 Franklin St., San Francisco. Salvant is blessed with a rich, nimble voice that can delve effortlessly into blues, R&B and pop standards, and interpretive skills that are even more extraordinary when you consider that she is but 33 years old. Salvant comes to SFJAZZ for four shows Friday through Sunday to showcase her acclaimed new album, "Melusine," a collection of Salvant originals and reinterpreted songs, some of which date as far back as the 12th century. "Melusine" recounts an ancient folk tale about a woman who was cursed as a child to turn into a serpentine creature every Saturday. Singing in French, English, Occitan and Haitian Kreyol, Salant will be accompanied at SFJAZZ by her quintet featuring pianist Sullivan Fortner. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 and 7 p.m. Sunday. Friday's show will also be live streamed for SFJAZZ members. 

PHOTO: Karolis Kaminskas


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