For One to Love

For One to Love

by Cecile McLorin Salvant
For One to Love

For One to Love

by Cecile McLorin Salvant

CD(Digi-Pak / with Booklet)

$17.99 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Temporarily Out of Stock Online
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

A brilliantly realized follow-up to her Grammy-nominated 2013 effort, WomanChild, vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant's third album, 2015's For One to Love, is at its core a small-group jazz album featuring a thoughtfully curated set of standards and originals. However, with Salvant at the mike, backed here with nuanced skill by pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Paul Sikivie, and drummer Lawrence Leathers, it's also a series of virtuoso performances, each one seemingly more engaging and emotionally resonant than the last. Conceptually centered around notions of romantic love -- from conflicted, melancholic expressions to more bawdy, sensual ones -- the album finds Salvant further demonstrating the poetic compositional skills and feminist themes that helped make WomanChild so much more than just a solid album from an accomplished jazz vocalist. However, Salvant's feminism here, while finely articulated, isn't explicit. It lies more subtly in the context of her choices. Her exuberant reading of the swing-era "Growlin' Dan," a song by Blanche Calloway, Cab's lesser-known older sister and mentor, seems to symbolize Salvant's distinctly female point of view. The same might be said of her sardonically faithful rendition of Burt Bacharach's infamously misogynistic "Wives and Lovers" or her playful take on the Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers standard "Stepsisters' Lament," in which she coyly asks "Oh, why would a fella want a girl like her?/A girl who's so unusual/Why can't a fella ever once prefer a usual girl like me?" Of course, not to split hairs, but there isn't really anything usual about Salvant. A true sculptor of song, she is the kind of singer who exerts perfect control over everything she sings, molding each musical moment at will. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, to find out that she also painted the image on the cover of For One to Love, a woman's face, Picasso askew, crying from happiness or heartbreak. It's this kind of emotional dichotomy that Salvant, with her malleable talent, is so adept at expressing. She's able to push her voice to the edge of control, but that breaking point is most likely a product of her own virtuosic illusion -- since she never crosses it. As on the poignant "Left Over," in which she sings about an unrequited love, her voice soars into a wobbly falsetto one second, and pulls back into a throaty coo the next, whispering that "his hands on mine are all I know of love, of love." This is a theatrical move, an actor's stage approach to singing in character, only it's Salvant's own composition and it breaks your heart. Salvant's originals are all lyrical, sad, and personal, revealing achingly raw emotions. On tunes like "Underling," we're left to ponder whether the song is about her ruinous devotion to a lover or her painful dedication to her creative muse. Regardless, the results are heartbreaking and beautiful. ~ Matt Collar

Product Details

Release Date: 09/04/2015
Label: Mack Avenue
UPC: 0673203109520
Rank: 114866

Tracks

  1. Fog
  2. Growlin' Dan
  3. Stepsisters' Lament
  4. Look at Me
  5. Wives and Lovers
  6. Left Over
  7. The Trolley Song
  8. Monday
  9. What's the Matter Now?
  10. Le Mal de Vivre
  11. Something's Coming
  12. Underling

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Cecile McLorin Salvant   Primary Artist,Vocals,Handwriting
Aaron Diehl   Piano
Paul Sikivie   Double Bass
Lawrence Leathers   Drums

Technical Credits

Todd Whitelack   Engineer
Clyde Hart   Composer
Leonard Bernstein   Composer
Mark Wilder   Mastering
Will Wakefield   Production Manager
Al Pryor   Producer
Burt Bacharach   Composer
Stephen Sondheim   Composer
Blanche Calloway   Composer
Hal David   Composer
Clarence Williams   Composer
Oscar Hammerstein II   Composer
Richard Rodgers   Composer
Ralph Blane   Composer
Raj Naik   Design
Randall Kennedy   Creative Director
Maria Ehrenreich   Creation,Creative Producer
Monique Andree Serf   Composer
Timothy Marchiafava   Assistant Engineer
Gretchen Valade   Executive Producer
Trevor Fedele   Assistant Engineer
Cecile McLorin Salvant   Composer,Art Direction,Illustrations
Mark Fitton   Photography
Spencer Williams   Composer
Hugh Martin   Composer
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews