2024-09-07 03:42:28
There are artists who play and are good. There are others who play and sing, and are better. There are those who play, sing and compose, and are very good. But there are those who, beyond the adventures of playing, singing or composing, become captivating. Those are the essential ones. Cécile McLorin Salvantundoubtedly, belongs to this last category. Beyond the Brechtian paraphrase, when it comes to exposing the jazz of these timesWith her leaks and equations, McLorin Salvant is a different artist. Because in addition to promoting the pleasure that music produces when it is insinuated as a higher category of thought, her creative parable reflects a search without solutions, between tradition and the openings that a well-tempered post-avant-garde allows. One of those cases in which the result is much more than the sum of the parts.
On Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th, at 8pm and 10:30pm, Cécile McLorin Salvant will be performing in Bebop Clubthe jazz stronghold of Uriarte 1658The singer will perform for the first time in Buenos Aires as part of the packed international lineup with which the label celebrates its ten years of activity, which will continue with two pianists: Cyrus Chestnut, on September 27 and 28, and Danilo Pérez, on October 1 and 2.
In dialogue with Page/12McLorin Salvant says she will bring a lot of music to the city she knew as a child, on a family trip she remembers very little about. But nothing she will bring is prepared. Or rather, everything, according to her artistic creed, will be left to what the moment dictates. “Our set is substantially improvised! So it will depend on the feeling of the day and, above all, of the communication that we achieve with the public,” anticipates the singer and songwriter – as well as a visual artist–. “I am excited about the idea of singing in a jazz club in Buenos Aires. I like small spaces, where I can see the audience up close. That helps a lot to create a special atmosphere. In this type of space, the back and forth that is essential to making music like we do is better achieved,” he says.
They will be with her Sullivan Fortner on piano, Yasushi Nakamura on bass and Savannah Harris on drums. A young, classic jazz trio, capable of accompanying the singer in her projections. “I like these musicians because they create a sound that goes in the same direction as me and above all because they do it with versatility, intelligence and musicality. We don’t think of music in terms of genre or tradition,” says McLorin Salvant. Fortner, recognized as a “Rising Star” by the magazine’s critics’ poll DownBeat This year, he is an outstanding pianist and the sound architect of the singer’s latest albums. His technical solidity, the subtlety of his sound and his harmonic imagery are substantial to accompany the searches and round out the sound of a singer like McLorin Salvant. The rhythmic sensitivity and instrumental skill of Nakamura on double bass and Savannah Harris on drums complete this idea of a open music, capable of going beyond tradition without separating itself from it.
What does jazz mean?
Although her music is elusive to definitions, McLorin Salvant is a jazz artist. Although she sometimes denies it. “I just don’t know what it means to be a jazz artist,” she says ironically. She was born in Miami to a Haitian father and a French mother. She spent her childhood in Florida, where she had her first contact with music. She studied piano and lyrical singing before settling in France, where she graduated in law from the University of Grenoble and attended the Darius Milhaud Conservatory in Aix-en-Provence, studying Baroque Music and Jazz. Her music is made of this mixture, marinated with patience, work and talent.
The most recent reflection of their searches is captured in Melusinea conceptual work about the fairy who transforms into a dragon in the Arthurian cycle of legends. McLorin Salvant She sings in French, a little English and her parents’ languages: Occitan and Haitian Creole.. She makes her own songs and recreates pieces by troubadours from different periods, between the medieval Almucs de Castelneau and the current Véronique Sanson, as well as more or less traditional songs. Her recording career began in 2010, when she recorded with the Jean-François Bonnel Paris Quintet Cecilea self-produced album with jazz classics. She had recently won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and her talent was no longer a secret, so many were quick to announce that the heir to the tradition forged by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, among others, had – once again – arrived.
But no, in Woman Child (2013), without completely shattering hope, the singer already showed that behind the incorruptible swing, the handling of densities, the opaque reflections of a plastic and candid voice and the sad smile that the chosen ones of the blues have when they sing, there was something more. For One to Love (2014), and double Dreams and Daggers (2017), with which won successive Grammys for “Best Vocal Jazz Album”confirmed their presence in the jazz fugue. Behind the singer, the composer was already peeking out in search of other expressive horizons.
The partnership with Sullivan Fortner, which had begun in Dreams And Daggersis put to the test with The Window (2018), a piano and voice album –and some delicate organ touches– that puts the performer at the forefront at the crossroads of her roots in the wind, with a repertoire of standars that in his voice and in his gesture sound different and more of his own songs. The formidable Ghost Song (2022) affirms the beyond of a mature and bold artist. Between Gregorian, Kate Bush, Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht and The Wizard of OzIn addition to his own themes in which apparently irreconcilable worlds meet and resonate, a unique and powerful personality is developed.
Sound universes
“I don’t really know what I did on each record. I just followed my intuition and tried not to censor myself,” explains McLorin Salvant.For me, mixing is naturalbecause I didn’t grow up listening to just jazz. As I was saying, I’m not sure what jazz is, where it begins and where it ends. Over time I’m learning to accept how fluid these boundaries are and to take advantage of those porosities to filter through what’s different,” Cécile continues, As a child I wanted to be an opera singer. “Or a musical comedy singer. I liked everything I heard and so I spent my time listening to all kinds of music, without much method, rather letting it pass through me so that in some way it felt like my own,” he says.
“These days, for example, I’ve been listening to Camaron de la Isla, Judee Sill and Doja Cat,” insists McLorin Salvant. A singer, a singer-songwriter and a rapper are some of the planets of a sound universe that, spinning on its own roots, changes continuously“I’m not sure how what I heard works in my music. I’m not sure how my cultural roots influence my concept of music,” she reflects. “It’s very difficult for me to say, because I feel like I’m just at the beginning of a process. Time hasn’t given me a perspective yet, I’m too close to it and I can’t get a complete picture. I can only look at the particularities of my own ancestors, and that fascinates me and at the same time makes me a little dizzy.”
Citizen
If identity is a fundamental search for the singer, it is also for the citizen. “Of course I support the demands of society on issues such as Gender equality, sexual identity and racism. I am curious about how things are, how they have been and where they are going. I often feel overwhelmed and even frustrated,” she confesses. “But I am an artist and in some way I channel fears, questions, fascinations and desires through my music, in my interpretations, in my choices,” says McLorin Salvant, who in 2020 came together with pianist Renee Rosnes, clarinetist Anat Cohen, saxophonist Melissa Aldana and trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, among others, in Artemis, A jazz supergroup that is much more than a feminist claim“It started out as a concert we agreed to do and it evolved over time. There were no feminist principles, at least on my part, although I can’t speak for the other members. In any case, demanding equality, in jazz as in everything else, is not capricious radicalism, it’s the least we can do!” the singer enthuses.
McLorin Salvant assures that He doesn’t like awards. But between the Thelonious Monk Competition in 2010, the three Grammys, the MacArthur Fellowship that was awarded in 2020, the most recent Doris Duke Artist Award, and the latest Annual Critics Poll, DownBeatfor example, won many. “I won’t deny that I get excited, and I feel very happy and recognized if I win a prize. But they are not my goal. A prize also brings with it the danger of feeling a certain pressure and even a kind of greed,” she says. “But above all It feeds the idea that there is a hierarchy and competitionthat there is only one that is better and if you lose you can go a little crazy. So it is better not to think about them at all and remind yourself that before that there is the music and the art, the process, always. Remind yourself that all of this is study and discipline,” she says.
At 35, McLorin Salvant is the black pearl of global jazz, the darling of critics and the delight of an audience that seeks her out at the world’s most important festivals. But she, she says, tries to live in the moment with the feeling that anything could happen. Like in jazz, something she says she cannot explain. “Seriously! The truth is I don’t know what jazz is! In any case, more than an idea I have a feeling of what jazz could be. But I’m not ready to put it into words.”