Cécile McLorin Salvant
Sunday, November 1, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Matthews Theatre
Hailed by some as a successor to Billie Holiday, Cécile McLorin Salvant is one of the leading voices in jazz today. A winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition at age 21 and a three-time GRAMMY Award recipient, she brings a singular clarity and curiosity to everything she sings.
A composer, singer, and visual artist, Salvant centers her work on storytelling and the unexpected connections between musical traditions. She moves fluidly across jazz, blues, vaudeville, folk, baroque, and global vernacular styles, treating them as living material for reinvention rather than fixed genres.
Her voice is widely noted for its precision and emotional depth. The late Jessye Norman described her as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings.” Rather than simply performing songs, Salvant inhabits them, revealing humor, tension, and shifting perspectives.
Her recordings—including For One to Love, Dreams and Daggers, The Window, Ghost Song, and Mélusine — reflect an ongoing exploration of narrative and form. Drawn to rarely recorded and overlooked material, she reimagines songs with a keen sense of story, power, and emotional nuance.
On stage, her performances are intimate and theatrical, shaped by close collaboration with her ensemble and a heightened attention to space and silence—music that unfolds moment by moment. In this performance, she sings selections from her latest release, Oh Snap (2025), a deeply personal album of original songs that showcases her singular voice as both composer and storyteller.
Media Sponsor
“One of the greatest singers of our time”
“Cécile McLorin Salvant possesses not only one of the most original imaginations in modern jazz, but also succeeds in reaching emotional depths that few other vocalists reach.”
From the Desk of Paula Abreu
Cécile McLorin Salvant has a way of making you hear familiar music differently. She has been hailed as a successor to Billie Holiday, but what makes her truly special is how completely her voice and sensibility are her own. She brings an extraordinary clarity, intelligence, and curiosity to everything she sings, while being deeply rooted in the jazz tradition and drawing on a wide range of musical and cultural influences.
Whether she is interpreting a jazz standard, uncovering a forgotten song, or performing her own original material, Cécile has a remarkable ability to find something unexpected in whatever she sings. She is a storyteller as much as she is a singer, and there is an openness and sense of discovery in her work that makes every performance feel like an invitation to listen differently.
She is a truly unique artist, with a deep understanding of the jazz tradition and an imagination that continues to push beyond it. I think audiences are going to experience something very special when they see her at McCarter. She’s not new to McCarter, and we look forward to welcoming her back for many years to come.
Best,
Paula Abreu
Director of Presented Programming, William Lockwood, Jr. Chair
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