Cécile McLorin Salvant

Cécile McLorin Salvant a vocalist with a ringing endorsement from Wynton Marsalis as a calling card, may be only 25 but sounds like an old soul. Half French and half Haitian, raised in Miami but subsequently a student of both law and baroque music in Provence, she performs in English, French and Spanish. She brings ideas from unexpected angles to the familiar art of standards-singing, and she applies a mischievous intelligence to well-worn lyrics in ways that transform them.

Resoundingly eloquent, whether growling the blues or barely breathing, Salvant has inbuilt swing, an actor’s stagecraft, an instrumentalist’s precision of nuance, and an appetite for dusting off rarely performed songs.