Cecile McLorin Salvant at Slee Hall

Cecile McLorin Salvant
Slee Hall at University of Buffalo
Buffalo, NY
February 9, 2024

The word is "trobairitz;" it refers to female troubadours of the Middle Ages who performed some of Western music's first secular songs (and the first composed by women) in the area south of the Loire Valley, what we now call Provence.

As Cécile McLorin Salvant prowled the stage and charmed the crowd with stories of her childhood and songs of lost love, one could not help but think of her as a trobairitz reborn a millennium later. Indeed, she learned Occitan, the trobairitz's language, so she could translate "Dame Iseut" and put it to music.

McLorin's voice is soft and nimble, singing Occitan cadences around a bouncy polyrhythm.

On Friday February 9, 2024, she and her excellent trio, Adam Birnbaum (piano), Paul Sikivie (bass), and Keita Ogawa (drums), performed a dozen songs from McLorin Salvant's seven recordings (the set list is at the end of this review) with several selections from her 2023 (French language) release Mélusine. McLorin's sophisticated voice was always the focal point as it pushed the boundaries of vocal range.

Birnbaum's piano acted as her musical foil, filling the space with octave runs and Keita Ogawa's soft touch felt right; Sikivie's thin, reedy tone and lyrical bass solos were a firm foundation. It was McLorin's voice, however, that brought the near-capacity (700) crowd to its feet.

Her impeccable, multi-lingual phrasing and sweet tone calls to mind Stacey Kent and the great Blossom Dearie, as described in this space. Listen as McLorin sings "Moon Song" in a previous performance. Her whispery voice rises and climbs, at once urgent and sad.

McLorin is not merely an accomplished musician and rescuer of songs in endangered languages, she is a tapestry artist, film director and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is a rare creature, a fearless artist following her muse wherever it leads.

Whatever her future holds, I can't wait to hear more.

Local artist Curtis Lovell opened the show.

Set List

Fog; Monday; Look at Me; Splendor; Moon Song; I Lost My Mind; Underling; Dame Iseut (Almucs de Castelnau (female troubadour, 12th century); Thundercloud; Obligation; Doudou. ENCORE: Ghost Song.

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