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Jazz Articles about Cecile McLorin Salvant
Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Dynamic Maximum Tension
by Angelo Leonardi
Precursore nel 2009 (con l'innovativo Infernal Machines) del nuovo rinascimento orchestrale nel jazz, Darcy James Argue approda all'etichetta Nonesuch e pubblica il nuovo album in studio: un doppio CD realizzato con i consueti partner della Secret Society più l'aggiunta della cantante Cecile McLorin Salvant e della violinista Sara Caswell. A differenza degli ultimi due dischi, Dynamic Maximum Tension non è un'opera multimediale ma conserva la spinta visionaria animata dalla costante riflessione socio-politica. Spinta che si traduce in ...
Continue ReadingDarcy James Argue's Secret Society: Dynamic Maximum Tension
by Katchie Cartwright
Darcy James Argue's superb double-album Nonesuch debut offers compositions written throughout his career. He turns to twentieth-century thinkers for “ideas that can help us in the present, that we can reexamine and reconfigure for our own purposes." These include futurist designer Buckminster Fuller, cryptanalyst-computer scientist Alan Turing, composer-arranger Bob Brookmeyer, actress-screenwriter Mae West, trumpeter-mentor Laurie Frink, and musician-beyond-category Duke Ellington, among others. Like West, Argue seems to control his own path. He may not yet be the tycoon she was, ...
Continue ReadingCécile McLorin Salvant: Mélusine
by Pedro Keul
Mélusine is a figure of European folklore, a female spirit of fresh water in a holy well or river. She is usually depicted as a woman who turns into a half-snake each Saturday as a result of a childhood curse by her mother. Not by coincidence, is also the name of the 2023 album (on Nonesuch Records) from Cécile McLorin Salvant, following Ghost Song, which has received two Grammy nominations and many mentions on the best albums of 2022 lists ...
Continue ReadingBen Wendel: All One
by Jerome Wilson
Saxophonist Ben Wendel came up with a unique approach for this album of duets. He plays with a different musician on each of these six tracks, but while his guests stick to their primary instruments, Wendel fills in the space around them with multiple saxophone and bassoon parts, electronic effects, and percussion. The most conventional results of this approach are heard in the two vocal tracks. Cecile McLorin Salvant's sensitive singing on “I Loves You Porgy" and Jose ...
Continue ReadingVince Mendoza/Metropole Orkest: Olympians
by Jack Bowers
Eight-time Grammy-winning composer/arranger Vince Mendoza, born and raised in Norwalk, CT, has enjoyed great success overseas--in Europe, to be more precise--since releasing an album with Germany's WDR Big Band in 1994. The following year, Mendoza began collaborating with the Dutch Metropole Orkest and in 1998 was named its principal guest conductor. Olympians is Mendoza's third recording with the massive, string-laden Metropole. He has recorded other albums with the London and Czech Symphony Orchestras. Here in the U.S., ...
Continue ReadingCecile McLorin Salvant: Mélusine
by Katchie Cartwright
Wynton Marsalis was right, Cécile McLorin Salvant is the sort of singer who comes along only “once in a generation or two." A MacArthur Fellow, multiple Grammy winner, and self-described eclectic, Salvant creates projects that encompass an astonishing array of idioms and historical periods, which she interrelates inventively and interweaves with original compositions. Here, she plumbs the francophone side of her repertoire. French songs have cropped up regularly in her live shows, but less on disk. Mélusine fills the gap ...
Continue ReadingVince Mendoza Metropole Orkest: Olympians
by Richard J Salvucci
Many years ago Dizzy Gillespie recorded an album called The New Continent (Limelight, 1965). Whether it was commercially successful is hard to say, but it featured an all-star cast of Los Angeles session players. The recording made a deep impression on some listeners because it was creative, dynamic, exotic and simply enjoyable. Good compositions (by Lalo Schifrin), arrangements and musicians will do that, even if the result is a bit different than mainstream jazz. Or mainstream Gillespie. ...
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