The Window
Since Cécile McLorin Salvant won the 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, she’s become one of the most confident singers working today. On her fifth album, she revels in the oft-performed but rarely recorded vocal/piano format with a fellow New Yorker Sullivan Fortner. In their treatments of highbrow musical and cabaret tunes like Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” and the French chanson “J’ai l’cafard,” Salvant and Fortner reach all the way back to the vaudevillian theatricality of pioneering jazz duo Bessie Smith and James P. Johnson. Closing with “The Peacocks,” the pair go modern and elastic, a reminder that these musicians can look to the future as well as the past.
The leader of a new pack of fully modern jazz singers explores the historical context and modern possibilities of every song she sings, even the deepest American standards.
Grammy-winning singer Cécile McLorin Salvant strips Great American Songbook standards to their bare essentials on 'The Window.'
On Cécile McLorin Salvant's 2017 album, Dreams and Daggers, she paired with pianist Sullivan Fortner for a rousing and saucy live rendition of Bessie Smith's "You've Got to Give Me Some."
Cecile McLorin Salvant sings with control, art, and a knowledge of the jazz vocal tradition that is vast.