Miami native returns home to celebrate her Grammy Award-nominated album Ghost Song,
The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County (@arshtcenter) is proud to present Grammy Award-winner CÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT on Friday, February 3 as part of its Jazz Roots concert series. The Miami native will be bringing her critically acclaimed jazz album Ghost Song to the Knight Concert Hall in a one-night-only homecoming performance. The New York Times recently named Ghost Song the Best Jazz Album of 2022, calling it “stylistically adventurous,” and NPR named it one of the 50 Best Albums of 2022.
Tickets to JAZZ ROOTS: CÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT are $45, $55, $75 and $125* and may be purchased now at the Adrienne Arsht Center Box Office by calling (305) 949-6722, or online at arshtcenter.org.
JAZZ ROOTS is presented by the Arsht Center with generous support from presenting sponsor EFG. JAZZ ROOTS also receives generous support from Baldwin Richardson Foods, Quint Family Foundation, Alan and Diane Lieberman and Steinway & Sons, the official piano of the Adrienne Arsht Center. WDNA 88.9 FM is a media sponsor.
CÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT, a 2020 MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy Award winner, is a singer and composer bringing historical perspective, a renewed sense of drama and an enlightened musical understanding to jazz standards and her own compositions. Classically trained, steeped in jazz, blues and folk and drawing from musical theater and vaudeville, Salvant embraces a wide-ranging repertoire that broadens the possibilities for live performance.
Her album, Ghost Song, features a diverse mix of seven originals and five interpretations on the themes of ghosts, nostalgia and yearning. The New York Times said of the record, “The vocalist who dares to take on older music with unsavory history turns inward on ‘Ghost Song,’ her most revealing and rewarding album yet… Salvant has applied that daring-to-go-there ethic to something else: herself, writing music that looks within and doesn’t blink.” NPR raved, “[Salvant] marshals all of the musicians around her into this style that feels connected to old blues, and rhythm and blues, but also has this kind of very contemporary feeling…there’s something really fascinating happening on every track of this album.”
McLorin Salvant grew up in Miami and graduated from Coral Reef Senior High School. She is the daughter of a Haitian father and French-Guadeloupean mother, and studied classical voice performance in Aix-en-Provence, France after high school.
“I’m really excited to be returning to the Arsht Center, this time as a headliner,” said McLorin Salvant. “It’s always really special for me to perform in my hometown of Miami and a rare opportunity to share my music with family and friends.”
Salvant made her Arsht Center debut in 2018, taking the stage as part of ARTEMIS, an all-female supergroup made up of some of jazz music’s brightest stars. Her performances range from spare duets for voice and piano to instrumental trios and orchestral ensembles. Her jazz/theater work Ogresse, which premiered at the Kennedy Center in November 2022, is an ambitious, long-form musical fable based on oral fairy tales from the 19th century that explores the nature of freedom and desire in a racialized, patriarchal world. She has performed at international venues and festivals such as the Newport Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Village Vanguard.
Opening for Salvant is emerging jazz force CHRISTIAN SANDS. His abundant piano technique perfectly matches his conception, accomplishing a deep musical goal: a fresh look at the language of jazz.
Since arriving on the scene, Sands has shared the stage with such jazz luminaries as Wynton Marsalis, Diane Reeves, Shelia E. and Gary Burton. The power and prowess of his playing has taken him from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to the world-renowned Newport Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival and Detroit Jazz Festival; celebrated New York jazz clubs such as the Village Vanguard, Jazz Standard, Blue Note and Dizzy’s Club; and jazz clubs all over the world. Sands also became a member of Christian McBride’s Trio, with whom he has toured throughout the world. Their 2013 release, Out Here, received a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Album.