Cécile McLorin Salvant is a fearless composer, singer, and visual artist who has become one of jazz’s most respected voices. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings.” Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, folk traditions from around the world, theater, jazz, and baroque music. Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor. Salvant won the Thelonius Monk competition in 2010. She has received Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for three consecutive albums, “The Window,” “Dreams and Daggers,” and “For One To Love,” and was nominated for the award in 2014 for her album “WomanChild.” In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. “Ghost Song” , Salvant’s debut for Nonesuch Records, was released in March 2022 to critical acclaim, and has gone on to receive two Grammy Nominations.

Salvant’s latest work, Ogresse, is a musical fable in the form of a cantata that blends genres (folk, baroque, jazz, country). Salvant wrote the story, lyrics, and music. It is arranged by Darcy James Argue for a thirteen-piece orchestra of multi-instrumentalists. Ogresse, both a biomythography and an homage to the Erzulie (as painted by Gerard Fortune) a d Sara Baartman, explores fetishism, hunger, diaspora, cycles of appropriation, lies, othering, and ecology. It is in development to become an animated feature-length film, which Salvant will direct.