OUT NOW: Cécile McLorin Salvant “The Window”

In just under the span of a decade Cécile McLorin Salvant has evolved into a multi-GRAMMY® Award-winner (with all three Mack Avenue Records releases receiving nominations, and the last two winning the Best Jazz Vocal Album category) and a prescient and fearless voice in music today.

Her newest release, The Window, an album of duets with the pianist Sullivan Fortner, explores and extends the tradition of the piano-vocal duo and its expressive possibilities. With just Fortner’s deft accompaniment to support McLorin Salvant, the two are free to improvise and rhapsodize, to play freely with time, harmony, melody, and phrasing.

Each new recording by McLorin Salvant reveals new aspects of her artistry. WomanChild and For One To Love established her style, her command, and interpretive range. Dreams and Daggers is a work that highlights her fresh and fearless approach to art that transcends the conventional—live and in the studio, with a trio and with a string quartet, standards and original compositions—held together by a vocal delivery that cuts against the grain, ever deepening, intensifying, and nuancing the lyrics.

Thematically, The Window is a meditative cycle of songs about the mercurial nature of love. The duo explores the theme across a wide repertory that includes Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim, the inner-visionary Stevie Wonder, gems of French cabaret, and early Rhythm and Blues, alongside McLorin Salvant’s brilliant, original compositions. Just as a window frames a view—revealing as much as it hides, connecting as much as it separates—each song on the album offers a shifting and discerning perspective on love’s emotional complexity. McLorin Salvant sings of anticipation and joy, obsession and madness, torment and longing, tactics and coyness. The Window traverses love’s wide universe, from the pleasure of a lover’s touch with its feelings of human communion, to the invisible masks we wear to hide from others and from ourselves.

All of McLorin Salvant’s study, training, creativity, intelligence, and artistry come together in her voice on The Window. The sound of her voice covers the gamut from breathy to bold, deep and husky to high and resonant, limpid to bluesy, with a clarity and richness that is nearly unparalleled. When she first burst onto the jazz scene, many listeners were struck by her ability to recall the sound of Bessie Smith, Sarah Vaughan, or Betty Carter. Yet with each new album, McLorin Salvant’s voice has become more her own, more singular. While conjuring the spirits of the ancestors, her references are controlled, focused, and purposeful. Her remarkable vocal technique never overshadows her rich interpretations of songs both familiar and obscure.

Touched at every moment by Cécile McLorin Salvant’s brilliance, The Window is a dazzling new release from an artist who is surely, to quote Duke Ellington, “beyond category.”

http://www.cecilemclorinsalvant.com/

”With vast vocal range and meticulous execution, Cécile McLorin Salvant took command of the Tiny Desk with a calm demeanor that felt both humble and persuasive.” – NPR Music 

Watch her Tiny Desk

“…an artist with so fresh a point of view that her singing amounts to a kind of re-writing.” – The Nation

“Salvant, regularly and rightly, is considered one of the greatest jazz singers of her generation, but that label sells her short.” – Rolling Stone

“She is wry and unflinching, stating the songs so boldly that their male chauvinism, untenable romanticism or high morality start to form a genre of dark humor.” – The New York Times

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