Virginia Arts Festival Presents Cecile McLorin Salvant with Aaron Diehl

One of the hottest new voices in jazz comes to the Virginia Arts Festival in April, when Cecile McLorin Salvant performs in the Festival's intimate Robin Hixton Theater. Critic Ben Ratliff of The New York Times calls Ms. Salvant "the finest jazz singer to emerge in the last decade," and The Guardian praises her "jazz-informed artistry of the highest class...Salvant has an inbuilt swing, an actor's stagecraft, an instrumentalist's precision."

Her voice, swinging from a growl to a whisper, has drawn comparisons with such legends as Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson, but Salvant's sound is all her own. It's a voice that attracts awards: in 2010, she took first prize at the Thelonius Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition; her first album, recorded in 2013, garnered a Grammy nomination and won Jazz Album of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll and Top Vocal Album in the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll; and in 2016 she won her first Grammy.

Born and raised in Miami, Florida of a French mother and a Haitian father, Salvant started classical piano studies at 5, and began singing in the Miami Choral Society at 8. Early on, she developed an interest in classical voice, began studying with private instructors, and later moved to France to study. But she discovered that the character of her voice was better suited for jazz-and from that day forward, critics and audiences have agreed.

In concert, Salvant's repertoire is a fascinating trip through time, exploring connections between jazz, vaudeville, blues, and folk music and often unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong stories.

Tickets are $30 and can be purchased online at www.vafest.org, by phone at 757-282-2822 or by visiting the Virginia Arts Festival box office located at 440 Bank Street in Norfolk between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday-Friday.