Thoughts on music: Cécile McLorin Salvant

When I recently listened to Cécile McLorin Salvant sing the hard-hitting “Okie Wise,” during an NPR “Tiny Desk Concert,” I was awed by the way in which she embraced the discomforting theme of this acapella American folk song with both calmness and ease. “Okie Wise,” which tells a tragic story of a murder victim, Naomi Wise and her husband and killer, John Lewis, addresses gender-based violence head on and McLorin Savant places it in a historical context, too.

Then pushed her in deep waters
Where he knew that she would drown
He jumped on his pony and away he did ride
The screams of little Okie went down by his side.

I’ve always been impressed by the powerful sound and range of the Miami-native McLorin Salvant’s voice and her choice of songs. She can at times sing spiritually, and other times jazzy, but always – always – it’s her voice that’s both superb and exquisite in its sound and in its presentation. Little did I realize that as a teen, McLorin Salvant, 29, the son of a Haitian father and French mother, once sported a Mohawk hairdo and was into bands like Alice In Chains and other “radical feminist punk stuff,” she recently was quoted as saying in an NPR interview. “Sometimes I still really like Bikini Hill, and I still have my little Pearl Jam grunge moments.”

I first became acquainted with McLorin Salvant a few years ago when she was a featured guest vocalist during a Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra holiday concert, and have always thought of her first and foremost as a jazz vocalist – think of her as a young Sarah Vaughan. I still remember how much expressiveness came across in her voice – not to mention that she exuded such a wonderful vocal foundation thanks to a classical music upbringing.

McLorin Salvant’s set list for her recent “Tiny Desk Concert,” which featured, “Fog,” “Look At Me,” “Monday” and “Okie Wise,” showed off the depth and breadth of her vocal range. Her just released fifth album, The Window, is a series of duets with pianist Sullivan Fortner that “explores and extends the tradition of the piano-vocal duo and its expressive possibilities.” Throughout, we see how “the two are free to improvise and rhapsodize, to play freely with time, harmony, melody and phrasing.”

On The Window, McLorin Salvant covers Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story and “Were Thine That Special Face” by Cole Porter. Plus, she sings in French on two songs, her own composition “A Clef” and “J’ai L’Cafard.”

McLorin Salvant isn't interested in the idea of relevance – although being a Grammy Award-winning artist has given her credibility and drawn much attention toward her music. Instead, as she noted in a press release for The Window, she’s interested in the idea of presence. Nothing wrong at all with that kind of attitude.