Grammy Award-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant is guest artist for NEC’s Grow Your Art: A Music and Business Residency
Tuesday, November 30 – Thursday, December 2
Residency culminates in live concert on December 2 featuring McLorin Salvant with NEC Jazz Small Ensembles
Concert to be broadcast Internationally on Friday, December 17
Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist and MacArthur Fellow Cécile McLorin Salvant is the guest artist for this year’s Grow Your Art: A Music and Business Residency, taking place Tuesday, November 30 through Thursday, December 2 at New England Conservatory. Presented by NEC’s Jazz & Entrepreneurial Musicianship departments, the residency features a master class, panel discussion, and a performance. All events are free and open to NEC students, alumni and the public. For information visit https://necmusic.edu/em/GrowYourArt.
Tuesday, November 30 – Master Class
2–3:30 p.m., Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre, 255 St. Botolph St., Boston.
Select NEC students will participate in an open master class with Cécile McLorin Salvant. Event will be livestreamed. Information at https://necmusic.edu/events/grow-your-art-cecile-mclorin-salvant-master-class.
Wednesday, December 1 – Music Business Panel Discussion
2-3:30 p.m., Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre, 255 St. Botolph St., Boston.
Learn about the life experiences of female-identifying professionals active in the music world. This Q&A and Panel Discussion will feature the perspectives and lived experiences of President Andrea Kalyn, Cécile McLorin Salvant, CI/Jazz faculty member Dominique Eade, NEC Director of Cultural Equity and Belonging Monique Van Willingh, and NEC Alumna Ayn Inserto ('01, MM) in conversation with Jazz Studies Chair Ken Schaphorst. Event will be livestreamed. Information at https://necmusic.edu/events/grow-your-art-music-business-panel-discussion-1.
Thursday, December 2 – Cécile McLorin Salvant in Concert with NEC Jazz Small Ensembles
7:30 p.m., Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Live collaborative performance featuring Cécile McLorin Salvant with NEC Jazz Small Ensembles. Information at https://necmusic.edu/events/grow-your-art-residency-concert-cecile-mclorin-salvant.
Friday, December 17 – International Broadcast of December 2 concert with McLorin Salvant and NEC Jazz Small Ensembles
7:30 p.m. ET, information at https://necmusic.edu/events/grow-your-art-residency-concert-cecile-mclorin-salvant.
Cécile McLorin Salvant is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings”. Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, folk traditions from around the world, theater, jazz, and baroque music. Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor. Salvant won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010. She has received Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for her 3 latest albums The Window, Dreams and Daggers, and For One To Love, and was nominated for the award in 2014 for her album WomanChild. In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award.
Born and raised in Miami, Florida, of a French mother and Haitian father, she started classical piano studies at 5, sang in a children’s choir at 8, and started classical voice lessons as a teenager.
Salvant received a bachelor’s in French law from the Université Pierre-Mendes France in Grenoble while also studying baroque music and jazz at the Darius Milhaud Music Conservatory in Aix-en-Provence, France.
Salvant’s latest work, Ogresse, is a musical fable in the form of a cantata that blends genres (folk, baroque, jazz, country). Salvant wrote the story, lyrics, and music. It is arranged by Darcy James Argue for a thirteen-piece orchestra of multi-instrumentalists. Ogresse, both a biomythography and an homage to the Erzulie (as painted by Gerard Fortune) and Sara Baartman, explores fetishism, hunger, diaspora, cycles of appropriation, lies, othering, and ecology. It is in development to become an animated feature-length film, which Salvant will direct.
Salvant makes large-scale textile drawings. Her visual art can now be found at Picture Room in Brooklyn, NY.
The Grow Your Art Pitch Competition (taking place Spring 2022) is open to all NEC Student & Alumni within 10 years of graduation. This competitive application process is modeled on real-world grants, and students/alumni have access to coaching from the EM Team throughout the application process. Applicants have the chance to win up to $7,500 (1st Prize: $7,500; 2nd Prize: $3,000, 3rd Prize: $1,000) for individuals / ensembles to develop the business side of their musicianship. New and existing projects and ventures are welcome.
ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
New England Conservatory (NEC) is recognized internationally as a leader among music schools, educating and training musicians of all ages from around the world for over 150 years. With 800 music students representing more than 40 countries in the College, and 2,000 youth and adults who study in the Preparatory and Continuing Education divisions, NEC cultivates a diverse, dynamic community for students, providing them with performance opportunities and high-caliber training with internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. NEC’s alumni, faculty and students touch nearly every aspect of musical life in the region; NEC is a major engine of the vital activity that makes Boston a musical and cultural capital.
