“She is a revelatory artist. And while her talent has always been clear for all to see, her true gift is in her willingness to use her gifts to coax listeners out of their musical comfort zones. The art of persuasion rarely sounds so good.” That’s how our Howard Dukes described Cécile McLorin Salvant and her ambitious new album, The Window.
The world first learned of the incredible vocal artistry of Cécile McLorin Salvant when she won the prestigious 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. In just under the span of a decade she has evolved into a multi-GRAMMY® Award-winner (with all three Mack Avenue Records releases receiving nominations, and the last two winning the Best Jazz Vocal Album category) and a prescient and fearless voice in music today.
“She is a revelatory artist. And while her talent has always been clear for all to see, her true gift is in her willingness to use her gifts to coax listeners out of their musical comfort zones. The art of persuasion rarely sounds so good.” That’s how our Howard Dukes described Cécile McLorin Salvant and her ambitious new album, The Window.
The world first learned of the incredible vocal artistry of Cécile McLorin Salvant when she won the prestigious 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. In just under the span of a decade she has evolved into a multi-GRAMMY® Award-winner (with all three Mack Avenue Records releases receiving nominations, and the last two winning the Best Jazz Vocal Album category) and a prescient and fearless voice in music today.
Her newest release, The Window, an album of duets with the pianist Sullivan Fortner, explores and extends the tradition of the piano-vocal duo and its expressive possibilities. With just Fortner’s deft accompaniment to support McLorin Salvant, the two are free to improvise and rhapsodize, to play freely with time, harmony, melody, and phrasing.
Her gifts as an artist are rooted in her intensive study of the history of American Music and her uncanny ability to curate its treasures for her audience. Her albums are explorations of the immense repository of experience and feeling that abound in popular song. She understands the special role of the musician to find and share the emotions and messages in music that speak to our past, present and future. “I am not interested in the idea of relevance,” she explains. “I am interested in the idea of presence. I want to communicate across time, through time, play with time.”
We are proud to present The Window as our newest SoulTracks Featured Album. Touched at every moment by Cécile McLorin Salvant’s brilliance, The Window is a dazzling new release from an artist who is surely, to quote Duke Ellington, “beyond category.” Check it out.
Cécile McLorin Salvant - The Window
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The Window at Amazon.com
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