Cecile McLorin Salvant

The late Jessye Norman called Cécile McLorin Salvant “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings.” A composer, singer, and visual artist, Salvant has become one of the most singular and celebrated voices in jazz, a true storyteller whose curiosity stretches across genres, continents, and centuries.

• An Unmatched Run of Recognition: Salvant won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010 and went on to win three consecutive GRAMMY Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album. In 2020 she received both a MacArthur Fellowship and a Doris Duke Artist Award, two of the most prestigious honors an artist can receive. Her 2022 Nonesuch debut, Ghost Song, earned two additional GRAMMY nominations.
• A Curator of Forgotten Stories: What sets Salvant apart is not just her voice, extraordinary as it is, but her gift for finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, folk traditions from around the world, theater, jazz, and baroque music. She has a particular passion for unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, unexpected twists, and humor, breathing new life into pieces that history nearly left behind.
• A Performer Like No Other: A Cécile McLorin Salvant performance is as much an act of storytelling and discovery as it is a concert. Her phrasing, wit, and emotional range turn every song into something layered and alive, and audiences consistently come away feeling they have witnessed something they will not encounter anywhere else.

This is jazz at its most intelligent, most surprising, and most deeply human.