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Cecile McLorin Salvant

Cécile McLorin Salvant was born and raised in Miami, Florida of a French mother and a Haitian father. She started classical piano studies at 5, and began singing in the Miami Choral Society at 8. Early on, she developed an interest in classical voice, began studying with private instructors, and later with Edward Walker, vocal teacher at the University of Miami.

In 2007, Cécile moved to Aix-en-Provence, France, to study law as well as classical and baroque voice at the Darius Milhaud Conservatory. It was in Aix-en-Provence, with reedist and teacher Jean-François Bonnel, that she started learning about improvisation, instrumental and vocal repertoire ranging from the 1910s on, and sang with her first band. In 2009, after a series of concerts in Paris, she recorded her first album "Cécile", with Jean-François Bonnel's Paris Quintet. A year later, she won the Thelonious Monk competition in Washington D.C.

Cécile performs unique interpretations of unknown and scarcely recorded jazz and blues compositions. She focuses on a theatrical portrayal of the jazz standard and composes music and lyrics which she also sings in French, her native language as well as in Spanish. She enjoys popularity in Europe and in the United States, performing in clubs, concert halls, and festivals accompanied by renowned musicians like Jean-Francois Bonnel, Rodney Whitaker, Aaron Diehl, Dan Nimmer, Sadao Watanabe, Jacky Terrasson (she was the guest singer on his latest album, Gouache), Archie Shepp, and Jonathan Batiste. She is the voice of Chanel's "Chance" ad campaign for the third consecutive year. In August 2012, Cécile recorded WomanChild for the Mack Avenue Label with Aaron Diehl, Rodney Whitaker, Herlin Riley and James Chirillo.

Cécile has performed at numerous festivals such as Jazz à Vienne, Ascona, Whitley Bay, Montauban, Foix, with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in New York’s Lincoln Center and Chicago’s Symphony Center and with her own band at the Kennedy Center, the Spoleto Jazz Festival, Detroit Jazz Festival and other venues.

Cécile's "WomanChild" was nominated for the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

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Album Review

Ben Wendel: All One

Read "All One" reviewed by Claudio Bonomi


Classe 1976, canadese di nascita, cresciuto a Los Angeles e attualmente residente a Brooklyn (New York), Ben Wendel è considerato un astro nascente del jazz contemporaneo da diversi anni. Sassofonista e compositore, oltre ad essere stato nel 2001 tra i fondatori dei Kneebody, si è costruito negli anni una solida reputazione di solista e leader firmando ben sette album che hanno suscitato l'attenzione di pubblico e critica. Questo All One non fa eccezione. È stato concepito in tempi ...

Album Review

Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Dynamic Maximum Tension

Read "Dynamic Maximum Tension" reviewed 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 ...

6
Album Review

Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Dynamic Maximum Tension

Read "Dynamic Maximum Tension" reviewed 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, ...

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Play This!

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Mélusine

Read "Cécile McLorin Salvant: Mélusine" reviewed 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 ...

4
Album Review

Ben Wendel: All One

Read "All One" reviewed 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 ...

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Album Review

Vince Mendoza/Metropole Orkest: Olympians

Read "Olympians" reviewed 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., ...

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Album Review

Cecile McLorin Salvant: Mélusine

Read "Mélusine" reviewed 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 ...

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Recording

Multi-Grammy Nominee & Guggenheim Fellow Elio Villafranca 'Standing By The Crossroads' Featuring Cécile McLorin Salvant! ArtistShare Project

Multi-Grammy Nominee & Guggenheim Fellow Elio Villafranca 'Standing By The Crossroads' Featuring Cécile McLorin Salvant! ArtistShare Project

Source: Scott Thompson Public Relations

Two time Grammy nominated Cuban jazz pianist and composer, and 2021 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship Elio Villafranca, has created a new work for ArtistShare entitled Standing by the Crossroads. This piece, different than his previous work CINQUE, speaks about his own life experiences as an artist, growing up in the small town of San Luis, Pinar del Rio, surrounded by Congolese drums, educated in Russian classical music, while falling in love with jazz. In this project, Elio also speaks ...

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Education

New England Conservatory’s Pioneering Jazz Studies And Contemporary Improvisation Departments Present Fall 2021 Season

New England Conservatory’s Pioneering Jazz Studies And Contemporary Improvisation Departments Present Fall 2021 Season

Source: Braithwaite & Katz Communications

New England Conservatory’s internationally renowned Jazz Studies and Contemporary Improvisation (CI) Departments announce their 2021 fall season with an array of concerts featuring NEC students performing with faculty and guest artists. Highlights include the NEC Jazz Orchestra with special guest composer/pianist Arturo O’Farrill; Grow Your Art, a music business residency and concert with composer/vocalist and MacArthur fellow Cécile McLorin Salvant; groundbreaking guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson in a residency and concert; NEC’s visiting artist-in-residence, bassist/composer and NEA Jazz Master Dave Holland in ...

Performance / Tour

Jazz this week: Russell Gunn's "Blackhawk Revisited," Cécile McLorin Salvant, and more

Jazz this week: Russell Gunn's "Blackhawk Revisited," Cécile McLorin Salvant, and more

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

There's some interesting jazz and creative music on local stages this week in St. Louis, including only the second local performance ever by a highly acclaimed young singer, and a re-examination of music from an oft-overlooked period of Miles Davis' career, courtesy of a trumpeter raised in Davis' hometown. Let's go to the highlights... Wednesday, November 15 Trumpeter Russell Gunn, who grew up in East St. Louis and now lives in Atlanta, will be back home with his “Blackhawk Revisited" ...

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Video / DVD

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Cécile McLorin Salvant

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Cécile McLorin Salvant

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

This week, StLJN's video spotlight shines on singer Cécile McLorin Salvant, who's returning to St. Louis to perform next Saturday, November 11 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. Salvant, a 28-year-old native of Miami, made her St. Louis debut a couple of years ago at The Sheldon and is one of the most talked-about jazz singers to emerge in the last decade. She's already earned a “Best Jazz Vocal" Grammy Award for her third album, 2015’s For One to Love, and ...

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Recording

Blue Engine Records Celebrates the Holidays with BIG BAND HOLIDAYS: New release from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis features guest vocalists René Marie, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gregory Porter

Blue Engine Records Celebrates the Holidays with BIG BAND HOLIDAYS: New release from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis features guest vocalists René Marie, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gregory Porter

Source: Michael Ricci

CD streets October 30, 2015; limited edition 180g vinyl coming soon Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Blue Engine Records celebrates the most wonderful time of the year with the release of Big Band Holidays, a compilation of holiday classics performed live by the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Special guests on Big Band Holidays are some of today’s commanding new voices in jazz: René Marie, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gregory Porter. Big Band Holidays will be released ...

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Performance / Tour

Jazz this Week: Benny Green, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Julian Lage & Chris Eldridge, Dave Dickey Big Band, and more

Jazz this Week: Benny Green, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Julian Lage & Chris Eldridge, Dave Dickey Big Band, and more

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

View more events at stlouis.jazznearyou.com. As Jazz Appreciation Month winds down and we head into May, it's another busy weekend for live jazz and creative music in St. Louis, with several touring headliners in town and a number of noteworthy events featuring local performers, too. Let's go to the highlights... Wednesday, April 29 Pianist Benny Green returns with his trio for the first of four nights at Jazz at the Bistro, in what will be his first appearance at the ...

Video / DVD

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Introducing Cécile McLorin Salvant

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Introducing Cécile McLorin Salvant

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

This week, our video spotlight shines on singer Cécile McLorin Salvant, who will be making her St. Louis debut with a performance next Saturday, May 2 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. Salvant, 25, is originally from Miami, and first came to wide attention in 2010 by winning first prize in the annual Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. She then signed with Mack Avenue Records and released her debut album Womanchild in 2013. It was nominated for a Grammy Award the ...

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Event

Cécile Mclorin Salvant Performs At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Cécile Mclorin Salvant Performs At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Source: Meryl Cates

Jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant gives a passionate one-night-only concert of her finest hits at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday, October 24 at 7:00 p.m. On stage in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, one of the most celebrated young jazz vocalists, Cécile McLorin Salvant, performs some of her most dynamic and theatrical songs on this unforgettable evening. Salvant is the winner of the 2010 Thelonious Monk International Vocals Competition. Salvant’s style combines precise technique, a playful sense of ...

Photos

Concerts

Apr 13 Sat

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Olympians

Modern Recordings
2023

buy

Mélusine

Nonesuch Records
2023

buy

All One

Edition Records
2023

buy

Dynamic Maximum...

Nonesuch Records
2023

buy

Jacob’s Ladder

Nonesuch Records
2022

buy

Ghost Song

Nonesuch Records
2022

buy

Quixote

From: Olympians
By Cecile McLorin Salvant

Videos

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