Artist: Cecile Salvant

Cécile McLorin Salvant is an American jazz  vocalist.

She was the winner of the first prize in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010, and released her first album, Cécile, shortly thereafter.

Her second album, WomanChild, was released in 2013 on Mack Avenue Records, and received a 2014 Grammy Award nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Salvant won four categories in the 2014  DownBeat Critics Poll: Jazz Album of the Year, Female Vocalist, Rising Star–Jazz Artist, and Rising Star–Female Vocalist. Her third album, For One to Love, was released on September 5, 2015, to critical acclaim from The New York Times, The Guardian, and Los Angeles Times. It won her the Grammy Award  for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2016. 

In 2007, Salvant moved to Aix-en-Provence, France, to study law as well as classical and baroque voice at the Darius Milhaud Conservatory. It was in Aix-en-Provence, with reedist and teacher Jean-François Bonnel, that she studied improvisation, instrumental and vocal repertoire, and sang with her first band. 

In a four-star review of her sold-out engagement at Ronnie Scott's Club in London in June 2015, John Fordham wrote in The Guardian: "She brings ideas from unexpected angles to the familiar art of standards-singing, and she applies a mischievous intelligence to well-worn lyrics in ways that transform them. 

She describes her sound as jazz, blues, with elements of folk and musical theatre. She composes music and lyrics which she also sings in French, her native language, as well as in Spanish. She enjoys popularity in Europe and in the United States, performing in clubs, concert halls, and festivals accompanied by renowned musicians. Salvant has performed at jazz venues and festivals including  Ronnie Scott's, the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, and the Village Vanguard. 

Further information about Cecile Salvant is found here.

This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cile_McLorin_Salvant, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).