Cécile McLorin Salvant: Dreams and Daggers on Mack Avenue Records:
2-CD Set, Deluxe 3-LP 180 Gram Vinyl Set
GRAMMY® Award-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant has had a
remarkable rise to stardom in her professional career, and she's
taking another big leap forward with Dreams and Daggers, her third
album for Mack Avenue Records, available now.
"The songs on this album are of dreams and daggers. The daggers have been used at times to attack, at times to defend.
For
power, no doubt, to take it, to keep it. The dreams are the ones I
caught looking out a window, or from the light sleep before the deep. I
don't always know what they mean, but they are the ones I was able to
keep. And yet dreams can be desires too. I wrote them down to make them
true. That we may bring our wildness into view. That we may be unruled
and unruly," explains McLorin Salvant.
"You get a singer like this once in a generation or two." - Wynton Marsalis
"..her
impeccable articulation, sly phrasings, and that distinctive way she
has of conveying different characters and voicings within a song, as if
she's playing different roles." - Village Voice
"...the best jazz vocal album in a decade, maybe in longer than that." - Stereophile
"She
is wry and unflinching, stating the songs so boldly that their male
chauvinism, untenable romanticism or high morality start to form a genre
of dark humor." - The New York Times
"...a master class
in entertainment as confrontation: impossible to turn away from her
captivating performance, which made it impossible to ignore the enduring
relevance of each song's straightforward indictment of American
society." - Billboard
"Salvant has a supple, well-trained
voice with spot-on pitch. (No vibrato-teases; no meandering warbles
passing as melisma.) Her low notes go from husky to full-bodied; her
high notes float purely and cleanly. When she scats, it's not an ego
trip but a musical game, where notes and syllables get to shape-shift."
- The New York Times Magazine
"She had emotional range,
too, inhabiting different personas in the course of a song, sometimes
even a phrase-delivering the lyrics in a faithful spirit while also
commenting on them, mining them for unexpected drama and wit." - The
New Yorker
"As Cécile McLorin Salvant spun songs into a
brilliant silk tapestry, I thought, if anyone can extend the lineage of
the Big Three -- Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald --
it is this...virtuoso." - The New York Times
In 2013,
McLorin Salvant made her Mack Avenue Records debut with WomanChild,
garnering a GRAMMY® Award-nomination, NPR Music's pick for "Best Jazz
Vocal Album of the Year," and three placements in DownBeat's critic's
poll as "Jazz Album of the Year," "Top Female Vocalist," and "Best
Female Jazz Up and Coming Artist of the Year," among many other
accolades. Her 2015 follow up release, For One To Love, won the GRAMMY®
Award for "Best Jazz Vocal Album."
McLorin Salvant's
music has been featured in multiple Chanel "Chance" campaigns and is
included in the soundtrack for HBO's acclaimed film, Bessie. New York
Times Magazine included her recording of "Trolley Song" as one of "25
Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going," The New Yorker profiled her
at age 27, Vanity Fair featured her in their "Millennials That Are
Shaking Up The Jazz World" piece, Essence Magazine noted her as one of
"13 Emerging Black Women in Music," and Gilles Peterson included her as
an "Artist to Watch" in The Atlantic. Learn more about McLorin Salvant
on NPR's "All Things Considered" and "Fresh Air," New York Times'
"Close at Hand," or watch her perform on BBC's "Later... with Jools
Holland" and PBS' "The Tavis Smiley Show."
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