Once in a generation singer Cecile McLorin Salvant gives Sydney a jazz master class

The great jazz composer and performer Wynton Marsalis said it all when he summed up Cecile McLorin Salvant with the words: “You get a singer like this maybe once in a generation or two”.

Jazz singer Cecile McLorin Salvant. Picture: Jess Gleeson`

The great jazz composer and performer Wynton Marsalis said it all when he summed up Cecile McLorin Salvant with the words: “You get a singer like this maybe once in a generation or two”.

It was Sydney’s turn to find out what he meant when she appeared with her three-piece band in a packed out one-off concert organised by SIMA for the International Women’s Jazz Festival. Over 90 minutes, the 34-year-old Miami born and bred songstress took her City Recital Hall audience through a set of songs which highlighted the vocal virtuosity and interpretative skills that were first recognised when she took out first prize in the Thelonius Monk Jazz Competition in 2010.

Ranging over material from six of her studio albums, three of which have won her Grammy awards, she mixed her own material with jazz standards, some covers of songs made famous by such diverse vocalists as Aretha Franklin, Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald and Kate Bush, as well as drawing on her cultural heritage as the daughter of a Frenchwoman and Haitian father.

Behind her are the prodigious talents of pianist Sullivan Fortner, who shares duties with Aaron Diehl on her recordings, and for this tour a superbly calibrated rhythm section in bassist Yasushi Nakamira and drummer Kyle Poole.

Fortner plays a diverse range of genres, often in the same song. He might start off with a barrelhouse romp for the Bessie Smith classic Haunted House Blues, then in the middle splinter off into a jagged Thelonius Monk-style solo full of stabbing chords and complex timings, only to revert some New Orleans piano worthy of Dr John.

Like Salvant he has had classical training and it shows in the extravagant arpeggios that pepper his arrangements. He opened the concert with a sparkling intro to Salvant’s self-penned unrequited love song Fog, but acappella vocal openings to the numbers that followed were a feature of the night. A hushed run from her mellow lower register to fluty top notes brought in the Aretha Franklin hit, One Step Ahead, although this almost symphonic take on it bore little resemblance to the original.

More recognisable was the medley of three songs by Burt Bacharach – The Last One To Be Loved, This Guy’s (Girl’s) In Love With You and Promises Promises – which were featured in the middle of the set.

If Fortner’s playing and musical telepathy were on display so were the skills of the sidemen. Bassist Nakamira gave a powerful driving solo in Haunted House Blues and Poole’s subtle use of hands, high hat, percussion sticks and rim shots were compelling in a song sung in Haitian Kreyol.

There was something for everybody with Salvant, a joyous and often amusing communicator, ensuring that all bases were covered, from her own ballads Star Eyes and Moon Song to the mini-drama of Barbara Song from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera. If it was early music you were after she summoned up her take on a 12th century female troubadour song in the ancient Occitan language of Provence.

A heart-aching outpouring of the Rodgers and Hart standard I Didn’t Know What Time It Was rivalled that of Ella Fitzgerald, while a belter of an arrangement of The Trolley Song from Meet Me In St Louis threatened to go off the rails with the madcap arrangement, but always managed to stay on track. This was the closing song of the set and brought a huge roar and standing ovation from the three tiers of the Angel Place hall.

They weren’t going to let her go and Salvant obliged with one of the French numbers from her new album Melusine – she could have been singing the Parisian phone directory, no one would have minded – and her wonderful adaptation of Kate Bush’s hit Wuthering Heights.

DETAILS

CONCERT Cecile McLorin Salvant

WHERE City Recital Hall

WHEN October 31, 2023