Cécile Mclorin Salvant

Born in Miami in 1989 into a Franco-Haitian family, Cécile McLorin Salvant developed an early interest in singing before going on to study classical music and jazz at the Conservatoire Darius-Milhaud in Aix-en-Provence. Her career took a decisive turn in 2010 with the release of the album Cécile and her victory in the Thelonious Monk competition, which launched her onto the international jazz scene. Later based in New York, she made a name for herself in clubs and at festivals, notably working with pianist Sullivan Fortner and regularly performing with jazz orchestras. Her repertoire blends standards, original compositions and rarely covered songs in English, French and occasionally Haitian Creole, with a pronounced taste for storytelling, character-driven pieces and close attention to lyrics. The albums WomanChild (2013), For One to Love (2015), Dreams and Daggers (2017), The Window (2018), Ghost Song (2022) and Mélusine (2023) trace her evolution toward an increasingly personal songwriting, where vocal jazz, chanson, blues, early-music influences and cabaret-adjacent elements intersect, and she also conceives part of the visual universe that accompanies her projects.