Nick Bollinger caught the profound musicality and eclectic songbook of visiting American jazz diva Cécile McLorin Salvant.
Cecile McLorin Salvant Photo: creative commons
Who: Cécile McLorin Salvant and the Aaron Diehl Trio
Where: Michael Fowler Centre
When: 13 March 2018
When Cécile McLorin Salvant began her gender-adapted version of the Beatles’ ‘And I Love Him’, second song into her set, I wondered for a moment if the evening would be no more than a display of extraordinary technique. We had already heard her navigate those clear high notes, then drop to unexpectedly rich low ones, in her opening tune, Bob Dorough’s ‘Devil May Care’. Now, as the Aaron Diehl Trio wove a languorous Latin rhythm beneath her, she seemed to be stretching McCartney’s well-known melody like elastic to show off her timing, timbre and range.
As it turned out, there would be much more than this to the 28-year-old jazz singer’s first New Zealand show and these opening notes, for all their spectacle, were little more than a warm-up for what followed.
Born in Miami to a Haitian father and French mother, Salvant trained from the age of eight as a classical singer, transitioning to jazz a little over a decade ago. If her classical training gives her such remarkable control, it’s her daring, her playfulness and obvious love of songs that make her one of today’s greatest jazz singers.
She dressed elegantly but not as a diva, in practical flat shoes that allowed her to move comfortably about the stage, while her sometimes comic expressions would appear to be magnified by her large round glasses.
Her repertoire is smart and eclectic and sometimes she seemed to be deciding on the spot which song to treat us to next. There were show tunes like ‘If A Girl Isn’t Pretty’ from Funny Girl and ‘The Trolley Song’ from Meet Me In St. Louis (associated with Barbara Streisand and Judy Garland respectively), and she approached their dated sentiments with knowing irony. There were early bawdy blues like ‘You’ve Got To Give Me Some’ and ‘Wild Women Don’t Have The Blues’, and she appeared to relish their juicy double-entendres.
There was her own impressionistic ‘Fog’, and ‘I Never Could Believe’, from Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes’s ‘American opera’ Street Scene, where she delivered the lyrics with the clarity of a great storyteller.
Just as vital to the profound musicality of the evening were pianist Aaron Diehl and the other members of his trio, double bass player Paul Sikivie and drummer Kyle Poole. Diehl’s immobile façade couldn’t hide a mischievous imagination. For ‘Give Me Some’ he chose to play the entire song with just his left hand, packing more invention than I’ve ever heard in a blues bassline.
For the faintly kitschy ‘Island in the Pacific’ she was accompanied only by Sikivie’s bass. Drummer Kyle Poole moved between brushes, sticks and occasionally bare hands, his pleasure evident in his frequent grins. All the musicians – Salvant included – were obviously great listeners too, evident in the spaces they left for each other, the ways they alternately led and followed, or joined together to punctuate the songs with sneaky accents.
What a treat to hear artists of this calibre performing at the peak of their powers.
