Cécile McLorin Salvant: With Every Breath I Take album review – Breathing new life
The jazz vocalist and the Metropole Orkest transform familiar standards into emotional dramas
It seems entirely appropriate that there’s a backstory of many years behind the creation of Cécile McLorin Salvant’s first orchestral album. The ten songs that make up With Every Breath I Take all sing with histories of their own: most of them have been in the repertoires of singers for decades. Salvant’s own ‘Left Over’ is the exception, although her singing of it with Darcy James Argue’s superb arranging for the Metropole Orkest puts it on the same level as the others in terms of lived experience.
Salvant’s background (she’s classically trained but has immersed herself in the jazz, blues and folk traditions) has given her the equipment to interpret songs fearlessly and with apparently limitless personality; you might wonder if we really need another version of ‘Send In The Clowns’ until you hear this one. From its murmured, scene-setting brass chorale and Salvant’s whispered intoning of the familiar ‘isn’t it rich?’ intro, this is a movie in sound, with the redoubtable Sullivan Fortner’s beautifully judged piano solo earning a co-starring role.
Similarly with the title track, where Salvant informs the object of her affection ‘there’s not a morning that I open up my eyes and find I didn’t dream of you’, there’s no doubting that she means it. Just occasionally, such wholeheartedness can put the listener slightly on edge. There’s so much about this album, however, that’s rather glorious: the vocal glissandi on Buddy Johnson’s ‘Ever Since The One I Love’s Been Gone’; the drama that infuses ‘Barbara Song’ from The Threepenny Opera; the conspiratorial twinning of voice and piano on ‘Lush Life’. It’s quite a trip.
Cécile McLorin Salvant: With Every Breath I Take is released by Nonesuch on Friday 26 June.