Barbican, LondonThe Grammy-winning
American singer puts on a typically nonchalant performance full of revelations
Flawless nonchalance at a treacherously difficult art comes as axiomatic for American vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant – the Wynton Marsalis-hailed, Grammy-winning, unflashily charismatic jazz singer who often suggests she could turn the phone book into a spellbinding libretto. For all that, the announcer’s warm up to her Saturday gig at the EFG
London jazz festival – “you’ll be taken on a journey you will never forget” – might have been queried by anyone comparing it with her tightrope-walking Ronnie Scott’s shows of a few years back.
But no Salvant performance is without its revelations – such as her exquisite account of the 1958 Cy Coleman classic You Fascinate Me So, or her jolting upward wail on the phrase “my heart will break, fired out of a melancholy dream-walk on Coleman’s With Every Breath I Take. Her forensic precision brought a gimlet stare to The Threepenny Opera’s The World Is Mean, Sting’s Until had its lyrics seamlessly compressed over her barnstorming stride-to-post-bop partner Sullivan Fortner’s rolling piano rhythms, The Trolley Song leapt off an exhilaratingly fast-boogieing Fortner intro, and Oliver’s Where Is Love? And Pirate Jenny’s The Black Freighter were visited in the encores. It was an exposition of inconspicuously controlled, finely-honed artistry, even if saxophonist Jason Yarde’s and pianist Andrew McCormack’s fusion of horn-hollering improv and spikier notions of melody had furnished some invaluable jazz balance in their supporting set.