Cecile McLorin Salvant: The Addition

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Cecile McLorin Salvant

The Addition, San Francisco, CA, November 12, 2014

Reviewed by Steve Murray for Cabaret Scenes

Cecile-McLorin-Salvant-Cabaret-Scenes-Magazine_212Jazz’s new wunderkind, the ridiculously talented Cecile McLorin Salvant, can blow your mind in just her opening number. Jerome Kern/Otto Harbach’s “Yesterdays” becomes a jazz frolic with Salvant’s penchant for emphasizing and playing with different vocal annunciations that take the listener on a joyous ride. She travels multiple keys in one bar, grunts and howls and generously allows pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Paul Sikivie and percussionist Lawrence Leathers opportunities to fly.

Her phrasing reminds me of Carmen McRae and it’s astonishing what Salvant can do with her voice on “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and the Bert Williams signature song “Nobody.” Rodgers & Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” never sounded like this, driven by an incredible bass backbeat; Salvant uses varying vocal styles to play with the melody. Similarly, her take on the racially sensitive “You Bring Out the Savage in Me” and Blanche Calloway’s “Growlin’ Dan” are showcases of unique vocal stylings that are sublime to hear. The trio has worked together for years and it shows. There’s a seamless intuitiveness musically with arrangements so tight they take your breath away. The unit as a whole seems like a solid symbiotic entity raising each tune to a very high standard.

Salvant loves to have fun, exhibited in her inclusion of Bacharach & David’s marital advice song “Wives and Lovers,” which today seems ridiculously sexist, and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Stepsisters’ Lament” from Cinderella. Her interpretation of Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,” delivered slow and measured, was transcendent. At this point in her young career (she’s only 25), Savlant can do pretty much anything she puts her mind to. It’s exciting to contemplate the possibilities.

Steve Murray

Always interested in the arts, Steve was encouraged to begin producing and, in 1998, staged four, one-man vehicles starring San Francisco's most gifted performers. In 1999, he began the Viva Variety series, a live stage show with a threefold mission to highlight, support, and encourage gay and gay-friendly art in all the performance forms, to entertain and document the shows, and to contribute to the community by donating proceeds to local non-profits. The shows utilized the old variety show style popularized by his childhood idol Ed Sullivan. He’s produced over 150 successful shows, including parodies of Bette Davis’s gothic melodramedy Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte and Joan Crawford’s very awful Trog. He joined Cabaret Scenes 2007 and enjoys the writing and relationships he’s built with very talented performers.