French American, Miami born jazz vocalist/writer Cecile McLorin Salvant receives unqualified praise from those who know music. Trained in piano, then classical, jazz, and improvisational vocal, her seven albums/CDs in English, Spanish and French are just as likely to offer Broadway, American Songbook, and opera as folk or jazz, none of it traditionally performed. Salvant is a true original.
Any talented abstract painter begins with figurative work, then develops his/her own vision. Any accomplished vocalist who skillfully reinterprets a song can sing the hell out of its straightforward rendition. Without roots, we experience the artist’s work only as surface aptitude. Salvant mines music and lyrics with vigor and invention, often creating what amounts to theater.
Sullivan Fortner, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Yasushi Nakamura, Kyle Poole
Burt Bachrach/Hal David’s “Promises, Promises” is this evening’s completely unexpected opening. Salvant imbues the pop song with style that elicits attention. Popularized by Bessie Smith, “Haunted House Blues” begins with atmospheric cacophony leading to the verse. Like most blues, it expresses a feeling rather than telling a story. Bassist Yasushi Nakamura closes his eyes, bites his lip, shakes his head and bends. Pianist Sullivan Fortner sandwiches dissonance between recognizably jazz riffs.
“I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart) starts a capella with shadowing piano. The purity and command of Salvant’s voice can be startling. Paul Simon’s “America” is just as relevant as it was when written 40 years ago: … Still when I think of the road we’re traveling on/I wonder what’s gone wrong…The song swells, but not overmuch. It has gospel coloring.
“Pirate Jenny” (The Threepenny Opera -Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht) is the first of several songs which present as theater. Part sung, part parlando, the artist personifies the blaze and bite of her character. She traverses the stage targeting faces; punches the air, rises on her toes and keens. Select words erupt or wail. Music is ominous, vocal searing.
A second of these is the iconic “John Henry,” arriving as a resigned, solo-voiced lament. Fortner slaps his thighs, stamps and claps creating increasingly complex, infectious rhythm. Bass keeps low. Drums seem to thrum. “Give me a coo oo ool drink of water” she sings like a mantra again and again and again, shoulders rising and falling as sound gradually fades. ‘Hypnotic.
Only at a Salvant concert would “Don’t Rain On My Parade” (Funny Girl – Bob Merrill/Jule Styne), which extraordinarily ends on D above C above middle C (I’m told), precede English translation of an aria from Puccini’s Turnadot. The artist jokes that she’s sure she’ll get locked up for “Frankensteining” someone else’s translation with her own changes. (She’s easy and personable when speaking.) Here’s the third theatrical rendition. Cecile McLorin Salvant not only inhabits lyrics (visibly as well as vocally), but plays a role.
Musicianship is terrific MD/Pianist Sullivan Fortner, who, like Salvant, hears what normal humans cannot, is versatile and symbiotic.
Two encores later…
Photos by Stefan Cohen
Cecile McLorin Salvant
Sullivan Fortner – piano
Yasushi Nakamura – bass; Kyle Poole-drums
UPCOMING:
New concert: Cecile McLorin Salvant Friday December 13 at 7 p.m.
