Inside Cécile McLorin Salvant’s ‘maximalist’ musical stylings: the 4-time Grammy-winning jazz chanteuse taking the genre into a new era, with folk songs, postmodern cabaret and Auto-Tune – interview

May 28, 2023

Four-time Grammy Award-winning jazz star Cécile McLorin Salvant talks about taking the genre into a new era while on a new world tour, with dates at Carlyle & Co. and Tsuen Wan Town Hall. Photos: Handout

At 33, the multilingual maestro already has 6 albums, 4 Grammys and a MacArthur fellowship, with 2023’s Mélusine mixing Creole traditionals, French art songs and DIY electronic experiments

Ahead of concerts at Hong Kong’s Carlyle & Co., Salvant talks about taking cues from Fiona Apple and why she skips standards in favour of Stranger Things-famous Kate Bush

Cécile McLorin Salvant “just” needs a cable. Specifically, a connection to digitally sync her Nord keyboard with her laptop. “I just got [recording software] Logic,” says the four-time Grammy winner with childlike excitement. “I’m going to be messing around with little loopy bits, playing with Auto-Tune and doing some electronic BS,” she adds, playfully comparing the results to Flo Rida’s oft-derided, heavily distorted vocal tracks.

Now, “messing around” with synths, beats, loops and blaring robotic audio effects is perhaps the last thing you’d expect from Salvant, a 33-year-old widely regarded among the most original jazz voices of her generation – and since 2020 a MacArthur Fellow (an academic honour that comes with a US$625,000 payout). Although the term “jazz singer” seems both cruelly reductive and too vague. “I’m a maximalist. That’s my genre, maximalism,” she retorts, aping the same buzzword readily applied to Oscar sensation Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Cécile McLorin Salvant is a self-proclaimed “maximalist”.