Michigan Theater
Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour featuring
Cécile McLorin Salvant &
Christian Sands (Music Director)
“If anyone can extend the lineage of the Big Three — Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald — it is this virtuoso.” (New York Times)
A young jazz star with an old soul and the hottest voice in American jazz right now, Cécile McLorin Salvant grew up in Miami, the daughter of a French mother and Haitian father. In 2010, she took time off from her studies as a French law major with a promising career in Baroque opera to audition for the prestigious Thelonious Monk Competition as a complete unknown. With her gorgeous, plummy sound and her innate ability to embody the lyrics she is performing, she won the contest hands down. Wynton Marsalis became a champion, hiring her to front the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra shortly thereafter, and her album, Dreams and Daggers, won the 2018 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album.