CECILE MCLORIN SALVANT
Le Monde, 12 juillet 2011
On a ici une confirmation éclatante d'un talent nouveau, et pas seulement prometteur, puisqu'il immortalise les qualités étonnantes que démontre depuis plusieurs années une chanteuse qui vient à peine d'entamer ses vingt ans. C'est un privilège rare de voir surgir un art aussi maitrisé, une qualité d'expression aussi mûre.
Yves Sportis
Jazz Hot 655, mars 2011
So Jazz #13, Février 2011
PRIX DECOUVERTE 2010 DU HOT CLUB DE FRANCE
Daniel Janissier ( Bulletin du HCF N596 - Dcembre 2010)
La Provence 2 janvier 2010 "La voix de traverse jazzy de Ccile"par Manu Gros
ALLABOUTJAZZ-NEW YORK by Susanne Lorge January 2011 page 11
Cecile McLorin Salvant was born about 60 years after Ernestine Anderson and yet, stylistically, she could easily be mistaken for Andersons contemporary from another decade (if not for improvements in recording technology). Like Anderson, she connects to her material effortlessly - and engages us with her honest and emotional delivery. Yes, you can hear in her performance all of the influences jazz singers often cite but Salvant does not imitate, does not brandish any well-practiced technique. This past October Salvant won first place in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition; part of the prize is a contract with Concord Records. While we wait for her first Concord release, we can play (again and again) her debut CD, Cecile (Sysmo Records), recorded this past spring in France with the Jean-Franois Bonnel Paris Quintet. Well have to wait even longer - 60 years, maybe - to see if this is one who lasts. My money is that she is.
JAZZ HOT 654 Cécile McLORIN-SALVANT : Ascension...
Scoring Without Scatting Cécile McLorin Salvant wins Thelonious Monk Institute Competition
JANUARY 2011 DOWNBEAT page 13 by John Murph
Plenty of singers graced the stage at the 2010 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Vocal Competition at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 4. But Cécile McLorin Salvant from Miami took home the grand prize of $20,000 and a recording contract with Concord Music Group. While second-place winner Charenée Wade ($10,000) from Brooklyn and third-place winner Cyrille Aimée ($5,000) from Fontainebleau, France, dazzled, Salvant distinguished herself through her authoritative musicianship and spellbinding conviction. Salvant traded virtuosic exhibitionism for vivacious expressionism. She enveloped her vocal prowess inside the material instead of on top, demonstrating an erudite awareness and a personal connection to her material. During the finals, she opened with “If This Isn’t Love,” a song that threatened to be too cute but was saved by Salvant’s use of tension and release and unerring pitch and diction. Her ingenuity came by the way she instilled the song with cliffhangers, giving her pliant phrasing an edgy sensation as if she could possibly land on the wrong note. Yet she always managed to land on safe ground regardless of how unpredictably she took the melody, how she leaped octaves or how she animated the lyrics with auditory dynamics. Still, it was her pithy rendition of the forlorn ballad “I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone” that became one of the most transfixing performances of the evening. And perhaps more impressively, Salvant won the top prize without scatting during the performance. “I choose not to scat, which was a risk,” Salvant said after the competition, appearing stunned that she won. “I thought maybe they would penalize me because I didn’t scat and everyone else did. You should scat at a jazz competition, but it’s not really in my nature. I’m really more into the lyrics. When I sing, I really think about the story behind the song.” Salvant showed that she could scat during the semifinals on “Bernie’s Tune” and “Monk’s Mood.” Yet she became the crowd’s favorite during her mesmerizing reading of Bessie Smith’s “Take It Right Back” during the finals. “I really wanted to sing two tunes that I really love,” Salvant explained regarding her choice of repertoire. “At this point, we had all already won and singing was just for fun. And those were two tunes that weren’t recorded a lot.” (“If This Isn’t Love” was recorded by Cannonball Adderley and Sarah Vaughan, while Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald famously sang “I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone.”) “Scatting is not the only device by which one displays musical mastery,” said Kurt Elling, one of the judges. “Cécile did not need to scat to prove her point. She had a well-defined point of view as a performer and had done the kind of technical work to deliver her music with utter clarity and verve. In that way, she displayed the wisdom of knowing herself as an artist and what she really had to give. Scatting would have been superfluous to her particular performance.”
JAZZTIMES December 2010What Is Jazz Singing, Anyway? by Nate Chinen ...
"She opened by confidently scatting through a version of Bernies Tune, and then went on to tackle songs by Monk (Monks Mood) and Bessie Smith (Take It Right Back). Some of this was standard protocol: During the semis, everyone had to sing an uptempo piece, a ballad and a Monk tune. At one point Salvant went in for extra credit, juicing her Bernies Tune scat choruses with a quotation of Monks Nutty. Her projection was strong, either swoopingly Vaughan-like (as in Sarah) or stoutly Lincoln-esque (as in Abbey). She sounded prepossessingly aware of her lineage, and, whatever else you might say about her, she sounded clearly, unmistakably like a jazz singer."
Open Jazz mercredi 15 décembre 2010 Les révélations jazz 2010 @ Alex Dutilh
La découverte vocale de l'année Cécile McLorin Salvant: une perle est née Vendredi 29 Octobre 2010 12:00 Alex Dutilh 
New York Times October 5, 2010 Ben Ratliff
No Nonsense, a Little Scatting and Plenty of Idiosyncratic Style...She was funny and dire and idiosyncratic, and never cutesy-flirty or mannered-hip, qualities that made parts of the semifinals tough to sit through. As she sang her less-than-obvious set choices a version of the bebop song Bernies Tune, with words by Lieber and Stoller; Monks Mood, by Monk, with words by the Dutch singer Soesja Citroen; and Bessie Smiths Take It Right Back she stamped out the lines with authority and power and a bit of outrageousness, as if they were home truths, not history assignments. She zeroed in on notes, sang at crawling tempos more than once, made her voice into a creaking door, a fog (a bit of Sarah Vaughan there), then a laser. She stayed on pitch and grew unnervingly quiet in the end verses of the Bessie Smith, turning the song, about refusing a rough mans advances, into an extravagant story. She put the house bands players at ease, keeping close watch over solos rather than scatting through them. She seemed fresh, but also as if she had decided long ago that she was an artist.
Something to warble about By Anne Midgette, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Singing Is Simply Really, Really Hard by Patrick Jarenwattananon
...She seemed intent on making the panel judge her on the power of her melody statement alone, which is either a nothing-to-lose or super-ballsy move. "I didn't solo tonight because wanted to do, really, what I love to do best, which is sing the lyrics," she told me afterward. "All my favorite singers are the ones who maybe didn't scat as much, but really they molded the lyrics and the words in a certain way."...But when you hear these feats, you're often left in disbelief. (Think of the technical acrobatics of Betty Carter, or Dianne Reeves, or Sarah Vaughan: "How did she possibly do that?")
Be Bop Spoken Here July 2010 Lance Liddle (2010 Whitley Bay Jazz Festival)
...the word was out that a 'must see' was Cecile McLorin Salvant. Arriving at Kelly's Stables it was impossible to get into the joint. It was packed to the rafters...I, together with thirty or forty others, stood in the corridor, faces pressed up against the glass. The sensation that is Cecile performed a programme comprising tunes associated with Billie Holiday. Phrasing, interpretation of the lyric, everything about the performance was flawless. The band, led by Jean-Francois Bonnel, was hand picked for the occasion. All were stars but none more so than Cecile McLorin Salvant.
JAZZ HOT 650 Marseille Jazz sur la Ville, Station Alexandre, 17 octobre 2009
La Gazette du HCF-Paris #66 - 2me trimestre 2009
Jazz Classique #50, avril 2008
