Cécile (McLorin Salvant) review: first-name basis

|

by ANGELA ALLEN

Ella and Bessie and Billie (and Cher and Pink and Prince and Madonna). But let’s stick to jazz.

Now there’s Cécile. She has two other names (McLorin Salvant) but she earns the first-name-only tag.

She is the It Girl among jazz vocalists. Her singing has it all: perfect pitch, a range from tenor to high soprano, precise articulation, full-on emotion, playfulness, varying timbres. As well as improvising on standards, Cécile composes and arranges many of her songs, distinguished by clever lyrics, a wry dark view of romance, an unflinching look at the pressures of female beauty standards and behavior, a funny dead-on assessment of male chauvinism, a lack of sentimentality, a timelessness.

Cécile performed at Portland’s Revolution Hall. Photo: Mark Fitton.

She sang at Portland’s Revolution Hall in late April with pianist Sullivan Fortner accompanying — and she was magnifique, as was the subtle touch of the ever-modest Fortner. These two should stick together on stage and in the recording studio; their chemistry works like magic, and they riff off of one another as if they’ve been performing together for decades rather than several years.

Cécile is fluent in French and studied in Aix-en-Provence. Her father, a physician, is Haitian, her mother French, so “magnifique” fits her versatile voice and her large expressive hands like a glove. She broke into big-time jazz as a teen-ager when she won the Thelonious Monk Competition. Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling, Patti Austin and Al Jarreau chose her in 2010 for her “remarkable voice and striking ability to inhabit the emotional space of every song she heard and turn it into a compelling statement.” The 28 year old has already won two Grammys for the best Vocal Jazz Album: 2016’s For One To Love and this year’s double CD Dreams and Daggers.

Sponsor

That CD supplied many of the tunes in Cécile’s hour and 45-minute Portland performance (“Nothing Like You,” “If a Girl Isn’t Pretty,” “J’etais Blanche”). She filled out the set with such oldies as “Lush Life,” “Stepsisters’ Lament” and the touching “John Lewis,” an a cappella encore. Wearing a satiny tent-like aquamarine dress, plain flat sandals, and large signature glasses that framed her restless, animated eyes, she stayed on task with little fanfare, a few jokes and no froufrou.

Instead of my celebrating Cécile alone, I asked several Portland jazz vocalists familiar with her to give me their takes on her singing.

Jessie Marquez

Jessie Marquez

“Cécile’s music overall is just so beautifully clear. I love the way she explores crystalline and earthy tones and colors. Her singing has a refreshing quality. … She commits to an idea and communicates it with clarity and compassion.”

Portland Latin-jazz singer Marquez plays often with her husband/pianist Clay Giberson at the Benson Hotel. They are currently singing music of Cuban composer/poet Marta Valdés, whose songs “have rich harmonies,” she says, “and the lyrics are soul-crushing.”

Rebecca Kilgore

Sponsor

Rebecca Kilgore

“I love her technique, which allows her to sing effortlessly.” Kilgore compares Cécile “most definitely to Sarah Vaughan. She’s not radical in that she can choose to sing pretty straight and doesn’t scat (to my knowledge), but she is radical in that she takes an old common song such as `What a Little Moonlight Can Do’ and turns it on its head.”

Rebecca Kilgore is a longtime Portland singer who faithfully upholds the Great American Songbook and works all over the world.

Marianna Thielen

Marianna Thielen

“She has serious chops but she uses her instrument to serve the song and the story. She sounds like she intended to do exactly what she is doing, and yet she is spontaneous.

“Not just vocally but stylistically and tonally, Cécile’s range is larger than most singers’, and she moves between ranges effortlessly. She keeps you guessing from song to song and commits to each one in a new way. Most singers have a few different ways to approach songs, and once you have heard a few tunes, you know what to expect. With her, you never quite do, and that is very exciting. It sets her apart.”

Singer/ songwriter/ lyricist/ writer Marianna Thielen is the female half of the Portland duo The Bylines, with husband/ composer/ arranger/ pianist Reece Marshburn.

Jan Koenig

Sponsor

Portland Playhouse Passing Strange Portland Oregon

Cécile is “an old soul inhabiting a young body, channeling the greats like Sarah, Ella, Billie, Carmen and Betty. I love her clear enunciation and strong story-telling. I find her very emotive and rhythmically playful, mining fresh nuances from standards as well as digging up lost nuggets rarely heard.”

Jan Koenig gigs often at venerable Portland jazz club and restaurant Wilfs with Ron Steen and other musicians.

Wendy Lin

Wendy Lin with the Portland Woodshed Jazz Orchestra

“She has such a focused voice.” Wendy Lin also praises Cécile’s vocal smoothness, sweetness and phrasing. “Stepsisters’ Lament,” a take on the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, ranks among Lin’s favorite Cécile hits.

Wendy Lin is an alto soloist and alto sax player with the Portland Woodshed Jazz Orchestra.

Mia Nicholson

Mia Nicholson

Mia Nicholson praises Cécile’s command of “paraphrasing” — improvising with the lyric rather than pure scatting in the mold of Ella Fitzgerald. But even though Cécile’s Betty Carter and Vaughan influences are evident, “she is no imitator. She easily blends mastery with playfulness without coming off as pretentious or self-conscious — a real hazard for a singer with lots of formal classical training like hers. She uses a wide palette of tones and timbres, from light to girlish to richer, full-bodied songs.

Sponsor

Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon

“She gave me so much inspiration,” Nicholson said after the concert. “Girl crush, for sure.”

Mia Nicholson has a May 4 gig at Bottle and Kitchen with Portland pianist Randy Porter (nominated this year with singer Nancy King for best jazz album, “Porter Plays Porter”).

Expect Cecile to be around for awhile.

Angela Allen lives in Portland and writes about the arts. She is a published poet and photographer and teaches creative and journalistic writing to Portland-area students. Her web site is angelaallenwrites.com.

Want to read more about Oregon music? Support Oregon ArtsWatch!

Be part of our
growing success

Join our Stronger Together Campaign and help ensure a thriving creative community. Your support powers our mission to enhance accessibility, expand content, and unify arts groups across the region.

Together we can make a difference. Give today, knowing a donation that supports our work also benefits countless other organizations. When we are stronger, our entire cultural community is stronger.

Donate Today

Photo Joe Cantrell

Angela Allen writes about the arts, especially opera, jazz, chamber music, and photography. Since 1984, she has contributed regularly to online and print publications, including Oregon ArtsWatch, The Columbian, The San Diego Union-Tribune, Willamette Week, The Oregonian, among others. She teaches photography and creative writing to Oregon students, and in 2009, served as Fishtrap’s Eastern Oregon Writer-in-Residence. A published poet and photographer, she was elected to the Music Critics Association of North America’s executive board and is a recipient of an NEA-Columbia Journalism grant. She earned an M.A. in journalism from University of Oregon in 1984, and 30 years later received her MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Portland with her scientist husband and often unwieldy garden. Contact Angela Allen through her website.

SHARE:
Triangle Productions Perfect Arrangement Portland Oregon
Oregon Repertory Singers Finding Light 50th Season Portland Oregon
Portland Playhouse Passing Strange Portland Oregon
Literary Arts Oregon Book Awards Portland Center Stage at the Armory Portland Oregon
Imago Theatre Carol Triffle Mission Gibbons Portland Oregon
Bonnie Bronson 2024 Fellow Wendy Red Star Reed College Reception Kaul Auditorium Foyer Portland Oregon
City of Hillsboro Walters Cultural Arts Center Tony Furtado Hillsboro Oregon
Kalakendra Indian Classical Instrumental Music First Congregational Church Portland Oregon
Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon
Maryhill Museum of Art Goldendale Washington
Portland State University College of the Arts
Golden Road Arts Grey Raven Gallery Near the Reser Beaverton Oregon
Pacific Maritime Heritage Center Prosperity of the Sea Lincoln County Historical Society Newport Oregon Coast
PassinArt Theatre and Portland Playhouse present Yohen Brunish Theatre Portland Oregon
Northwest Dance Project Sarah Slipper Newmark Theatre Portland Oregon
Newport Performance and Visual Arts Centers Newport Oregon Coast
Portland Art Museum Virtual Sneakers to Cutting Edge Kicks Portland Oregon
High Desert Museum Sasquatch Central Oregon
Oregon Cultural Trust donate
We do this work for you.

Give to our GROW FUND.