Home » Jazz Articles » Cecile McLorin Salvant
Jazz Articles about Cecile McLorin Salvant
Cécile 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. ...
Continue ReadingPop Goes the Jazzbo
by Patrick Burnette
"Going Pop" can mean many different things where jazz musicians are concerned, from adding electricity (dang it, Miles, why you do that?), to covering pop songs, to actually experimenting with writing pop songs (not too many take this path and few emerge unscathed). And then there's rare jazzer combining jazz and pop songs, as you'll soon find out. This time out we look at approaches all over the spectrum, ending with a vocal album Mike has already pegged as an ...
Continue ReadingSpring Releases From Cecile McLorin Salvant, Roxy Coss, Elsa Nilsson and Celebrating Marian McPartland
by Mary Foster Conklin
This broadcast presents new releases from saxophonist Roxy Coss, flutist Elsa Nilsson and vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant with birthday shoutouts to Deanna Witkowski, Nat King Cole, Berta Moreno, Eliane Elias, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mark Murphy and in the second hour a salute to Marian McPartland in celebration of her 104th birthday. Thanks for listening and please support the artists you hear by purchasing their music during this time of pandemic so they can continue to distract, provoke, comfort and inspire. ...
Continue Reading
