Jazz Singer Cecile McLorin Salvant Mesmerizes Frostburg

On Friday, April 17, FSU’s Cultural Events Series brought a LIVE! at StarScape performance by Grammy-nominated jazz singer Cecile McLorin Salvant to Frostburg’s Lyric Theatre.

Salvant, who has studied classical and baroque voice in addition to jazz, captivated the audience with jazz renditions of songs like “Something’s Coming” from “West Side Story”; “Glitter and Be Gay” from the operetta “Candide”; “The Trolley Song,” which Judy Garland sang in the romantic musical “Meet Me in St. Louis”; and “The Stepsisters Lament” from the 1965 TV-version of “Cinderella.”

She also performed a few of her original songs, including “WomanChild,” from her album of the same name that was nominated for the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, and “Fog,” a song from her upcoming album, to be released in August. Other songs included Clarence Williams’ “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate,” Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” and others, all perfectly executed.

Truly, at no point did her voice falter. As one audience member said during the Q&A session with Salvant held after the show, the singer has total command of her voice. “The manipulation of your tone is out of this world,” said another audience member, who commented on her ability to go from a soft, light sound to belting and asked her where she learned to manipulate her pitch so well. To that, Salvant credited her formal vocal education as well as well as experimenting with her voice. When she started studying jazz, she said, she “realized there were a lot of other colors you could make.”

Part of what makes Salvant such an excellent performer, besides her gorgeous vocals, is her ability to play the character of the song’s narrator as well as find herself in the character. Her and her band’s performance of “WomanChild” felt like a walk in Central Park through the perspective of a pensive young woman. In “The Stepsisters Lament,” she was convincing as a young woman who is jealous of the “frothy” and “flimsy” girls men tend to prefer, but she played a much gentler character than those of the original song, the evil Prunella and Esmerelda. Amazingly, she captures the essence of each song’s narrator with just her voice. Small gestures merely accentuate her performance; the real power is in the skillful way she pronounces the words, like by putting more bite in the word “bitter.”

She elucidated a bit on her expert characterization when she said during the Q&A that she takes a long time to choose songs to perform, and she chooses ones that are unique, touching and that move her to perform them. For instance, her version of the “Stepsisters” character came from her own experience; she first heard the song as a child and felt that it said exactly what she was thinking. She said she is attracted to songs that are funny, absurd, witty and ironic. When she’s practicing a song, she doesn’t focus so much on the technical aspects of performing. “I think about the story,” she said.

The audience was thrilled by Salvant’s performance. The only issue is that it was missing students. As Bill Mandicott, Assistant Vice President for Student and Community Involvement at FSU, pointed out after the Q&A session ended, the only students in attendance were the wait staff and other crew members who were working there that night. That’s great for those students, who got paid while getting to see Savant’s show, but what about the students who don’t work for CES? Where are the ones coming just for fun?

“Student tickets are only five dollars,” Mandicott says. “My only quest here is what we can do to get more students to get up, get unplugged and get into live performance… because to miss something like this… it just breaks your heart to know that people miss this show.”

CES’s next event is “Broadway Nights,” a musical performance by Broadway singers Gary Mauer, Craig Schulman and Rita Harvey, on Thursday, April 23 at 7:30 p.m. in the Pealer Recital Hall of FSU’s Performing Arts Center. Tickets can be ordered here or by calling the Box Office at 301-687-3137 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Regardless of the lack of students in attendance, Salvant left a good impression on the Frostburg residents she was able to reach. Many people in the audience requested that she come back. One asked, “How long can I expect a smile on my face?” From the claps and sounds of approval, it seems the rest of the audience was wondering the same thing.

Featured image by CES photographer Brandon Holmes.