Cecile Hits Her Mark But Misses The Spark

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Cecile McLorin Salvant – Auckland Town Hall   March 15, 2018

Mixing jazz, blues, opera, show tunes and pop, vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant brought some New York City sophistication to Auckland’s Town Hall last night.

Having just performed in Wellington a few nights earlier, Salvant, along with the Aaron Diehl Trio, held court at the stately Great Hall, even putting the pipe organ to good use.

Tables were set up on the main floor of the Town Hall to give the air of a jazz club, but the show started at the rather un-jazz-like hour of 7pm.

Cecile and her band got things going with Cole Porter’s All Through The Night, and it was clear from the first few measures of the song that we were about to witness a performance of technical brilliance.

Salvant’s voice is a thing of wonder and her control over it is incredible. When she dipped into her lower register a few seconds into this first tune, it sounded like another vocalist had joined her on stage.

Her enunciation is precise and one immediately gets the impression that she can hit any note and any given time and make it sound stunning.

Meanwhile the band…pianist Aaron Diehl, bass player Paul Sikivie and drummer Kyle Poole, hang back, giving her all the space she needs for her vocal acrobatics.

Diehl took solos during most of the selections and he played with fluidity and grace, never overshadowing the woman with the microphone.

In addition to two Cole Porter tunes, Salvant and the group touched on the blues…the Bessie Smith song Sam Jones Blues and John Henry…a bit of opera…Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes’ Somehow I Never Could Believe…and the straight-up pop of the 1963 Jack Jones hit Wives And Lovers.

The decision to perform Wives And Lovers, a song considered one of the most sexist of the 60s, was an interesting one. It followed directly after Sam Jones Blues, a 1923 composition where the female protagonist “earns her strutting shoes” after giving her cheating man the boot.

Cecile introduced Wives And Lovers as, “very different from that one”. For those not familiar with it, it’s a Bacharach/David tune that advises a young wife to be sure to look good for her husband at all times, lest he take up with one of the office gals, because, after all, “men will always be men”.

It could have been an interesting juxtaposition, and I guess I was expecting Salvant to add a bit of irony to her delivery, but if she did, I missed it.

Instead, she approached the song as she did all the others, using it as a jumping off point to show off her incredible range and control.

While that was all very impressive, it left me feeling as though I was witnessing a demonstration, rather than a performance. Not once was I moved emotionally by her delivery.

There were more impressive musical moments…Diehl’s 12-minute workout on the pipe organ during A Timeless Place, the swinging I’m Hip, with a casual, humorous nod to Harvey Weinstein and a lovely rendition of The Beatles’ And I Love Her.

It was this final performance that came closest to hitting an emotional nerve, but, I think that owed more to the beauty of Paul McCartney’s melody than to Salvant herself.

No doubt about it, Cecile McLorin Salvant is an incredible gifted vocalist and her band can play with the best of them, but at some point, it sounds like she needs to let the song and the music take possession of her, instead of the other way around.

Marty Duda

Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Reuben Raj:

Cecile McLorin Salvant set list:

  1. All Through The Night
  2. The Night Has A Thousand Eyes
  3. A Little White Ship
  4. Sam Jones Blues
  5. Wives And Lovers
  6. So In Love
  7. Never Will I Marry
  8. Somehow I Never Could Believe
  9. I’m All Smiles
  10. John Henry
  11. A Timeless Place (The Peacocks)
  12. I’m Hip
  13. And I Love Her
Marty Duda
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