The Singer as Musical Storyteller, With an Eye Always on the Big Picture

Where ‘Obligation’ might be described as music without singing, ‘Unquiet Grave,’ which is essentially a capella, is singing without music.

Via cecilemclorinsalvant.com

Cécile McLorin Salvant
‘Ghost Song’ (Nonesuch Records)
Live at Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center (livestream available until midnight May 18)

Can it really be a dozen years since Cécile McLorin Salvant burst on the jazz scene by winning the Thelonious Monk Competition? In all that time, nearly everyone who has written about Ms. Salvant has described her as “eclectic.” Surely that’s true.

Consider her new album, “Ghost Song,” which she performed over two nights this past weekend at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The repertoire spans the gamut, as they say, from Kate Bush to Kurt Weill to Sting to a folk song associated with Joan Baez and a batch of well-crafted originals. Still, there’s nothing that can be described as a jazz standard. (The concert included “Over the Rainbow” and “Pirate Jenny” which are not, alas, on the album.) 

Yet eclecticism is hardly the point. Ms. Salvant has always had the knack for a worthy albeit overlooked show tune; her 2015 album “For One to Love” included the “Stepsisters’ Lament” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella,” and “The World Is Mean,” another song from “Threepenny Opera,” is a high point of the new “Ghost Song.”

These songs from musical theater are more of a key to what Cécile McLorin Salvant is all about, which is hardly eclecticism for its own sake. The larger point of Ms. Salvant’s work is superior musical storytelling — and the lyrics of Bertolt Brecht and Oscar Hammerstein help her better to accomplish those ends than “Them There Eyes.”

At Rose Hall, Ms. Salvant performed in a big, poofy dress and an oversized Elizabethan collar, something very different from a canonical jazz singer in a sparkly gown and heels. The costumery was larger than life, but the singing itself is remarkably understated. And though she is not wary of a little sonic stimulation — holding or twisting a note in a way that’s bound to elicit a response from the crowd — the emphasis is always on the big picture, the larger narrative, rather than the momentary thrill along the way.

Ms. Salvant began and ended the Thursday concert with two of the folkiest pieces in her current repertoire, the traditional song “Unquiet Grave” and Kate Bush’s folksy but literary “Wuthering Heights.” In addition to theater songs, she frequently invokes poetry and something close to spoken word; “Obligation” is an original text, essentially, like Rex Harrison in “My Fair Lady,” recited in pitch and rhythm in a way that’s not exactly singing, with kind of an amorphous mass of sound behind her that recalls the jazz-and-beat poetry experiments of Charles Mingus and Jack Kerouac.  “What happens when the foundation of a relationship is guilt, not love?” she ponders. “Obligation.” 

Where “Obligation” might be described as music without singing, “Unquiet Grave,” which is essentially a capella, is singing without music; Ms. Salvant bends the notes in a way that suggests a Native American chant, or something vaguely pentatonic, or at least outside of conventional Western tonality.  

One advantage of the concert (and the livestream) over the album is Ms. Salvant’s stunning rendition of the mega-standard “Over the Rainbow.” This is perhaps the least obscure song she’s ever performed — though she did keep the less-informed members of the crowd guessing by starting with the verse. 

Staying on the yellow brick road, she follows “Rainbow” with the lesser known “Optimistic Voices” — performed in the movie by an offscreen female choir as Dorothy and friends approach the Emerald City (“Walk up to that gate and let it open”). This serves as a direct lead into “No Love Dying,” composed by contemporary soul-jazz singer Gregory Porter. It’s no less optimistic but more guarded, and enhanced by an expressive flute solo, both live and on the record, by Alexa Tarantino.

The official final number of Thursday evening was the title number, “Ghost Song,” which is one case where the performance on the album outshined the concert version, mainly because of the presence of a children’s choir.  This gives the recorded “Ghost Song” a suitably spooky quality — like the creepy school girls in “The Shining” — though live she’s supported by sinister-sounding solos from pianist Sullivan Fortner, guitarist Marvin Sewell, and a harmony vocal from Ms. Tarantino, which serves as a spooky echo.  

At Rose Hall, this was followed by many standing ovations and encores, among them a reading of Bessie Smith’s “St. Louis Gal” that’s even better than the one on her 2012 album “WomanChild.” 

Cécile McLorin Salvant has enjoyed lots of other big wins since the Monk contest, mostly notably three Grammys, and is now so popular that I couldn’t even get a ticket to see her. (Thank goodness for the livestream, which is still viewable for a short while as of this writing.) All is more than deserved: It’s hard to think of a better jazz singer and/or musical storyteller performing today.


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