William Dart listens to a number of songs that reveal the wonders that can come about when a singer is paired with a solo piano. In particular, he features a new album by American singer Cécile McLorin Salvant who's accompanied by Sullivan Fortner.
Cecile McLorin Salvant Photo: creative commons
Today’s New Horizons ponders the special magic that can happen when the band takes a rest or maybe takes a night off, and the musical conversation is just between the singer and the pianist. As when Ella Fitzgerald and Ellis Larkins, back in 1950, joined forces in one of the Gershwin brothers’ most whimsical and shapely songs
Coming just a tad closer to our times, there’s this 1961 partnership of pianist Ran Blake and singer Jeanne Lee on an album titled The Newest Sound Around. And could it have been anything else back then, with a man who’s made a career out of tearing songs gloriously asunder and a woman who was as happy to sing John Cage as classics from the Great American Songbook.
Here’s what they do with David Raksin’s "Laura", the title tune of a 1944 film noir by Otto Preminger. Blake’s piano dispenses noirish shivers, descending and ascending a particularly slippery staircase of chords. Lee sings as if she’s the heroine up on the screen, suspended in the intoxicating spell that’s being concocted around her.
Cécile McLorin Salvant has just turned 29 and, on the strength of her five album catalogue, she might have seemed destined to be a singer’s singer, a talent reserved for the few in the know to enjoy.
Earlier this year, at the Auckland and Wellington arts festivals, she would have added quite a few of us to her fan base through her lively concerts with the Aaron Diehl Trio.
It was an entertaining set, and the trio was definitely part of the act. At one point in the Auckland Town Hall concert, during an extended Norma Winstone song titled "The Peacocks", Aaron Diehl left his piano and climbed up to the town hall organ.
That same song is the closing number on Salvant’s latest album, The Window, but it’s the Chilean saxophonist Melissa Aldana who makes it into a trio with pianist Sullivan Fortner.
Otherwise the album is a marvelous and reassuringly old-fashioned outing for singer and piano.
Fortner is as nimble as anyone could wish for, providing the bopping backdrop when Salvant takes us for a 70-second dash through the world of Rodgers and Hart.
There’s such pleasure in journeying through the surprises of The Window’s seventeen tracks with two musicians who want us to enjoy a little bit of curating on the side. Not only did you meet Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in that 1942 song, but we’re also given a taste of Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein in a punchy version of "The Gentleman is a Dope", from their ill-fated 1947 musical, Allegro.
And there’s Richard Rodgers flying solo as well, in the best-known song from his 1962 musical, No Strings. Salvant flaunts the sort of vocal control that other singers might well envy.
It sounds as if Sullivan Fortner was cooking up a bit of Bachian fugue in one of his links there, and he has even niftier things in store, with a little-heard song by Alec Wilder.
The enigmatic Wilder was very much a singer’s composer, perhaps more famous for writing about other people’s songs in his massive 1972 book titled American Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900-1950.
He was scathing about his contemporaries. While "The Sweetest Sounds" escaped discussion, the previous Rodgers and Hart number, "Everything I've Got Belongs to You", was gleefully written off as 'old hat' and 'rip-tip-tippy'.
Wilder, unfortunately, didn’t include or discuss his own songs in the book and it’s good that Salvant and Fortner let us hear one of his best, "Trouble is a Man", tinctured with just a soupçon of the French composer Debussy.
Shimmerings of Debussy are not the only French touch on Cécile McLorin Salvant’s new album.
In fact, it’s in her very blood, with her French and Haitian parents – a heritage that had her emigrate from the States to France in 2007, recording her first album three years later with the Jean-François Bonnel Quintet.
Just last year, on her Dreams and Daggers album, she delivered Josephine Baker’s Si j’étais blanche with a contemporary political edge and, on her latest release, there's a song of her own, in French.
The whole tradition of French song is very much part of Salvant’s music and, for me, perhaps the standout track of The Window has her picking up an old chanson, a calling-card for the singer, Damia, back in the 1920s and 30s.
"J’ai l’cafard" is a beautiful piece of French cabaret or café philosophy, a world-weary lament for being down in the dumps, but coping. Damia, ever the grand actress, milks the song for it’s worth. Salvant, if anything, underplays it, keeps it simple and it comes across as a remarkable song of resilience.
The perfect finishing touch comes from pianist Sullivan Fortner. But this time he moves to Hammond organ, evoking gospel one moment, fairground the next as Salvant keeps chin up and sings her worries away.
Hear these songs and others by clicking the 'Listen' link above.
Music Details
'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)
'I Love a Piano' (Berlin) – Wyn Davies
Just Wyn Vol 2 (Live)
(Stone)
'Maybe' (Gershwin) – Ella Fitzgerald, Ellis Larkins
Pure Ella
(MCA)
'Laura' (Mercer, Raksin) – Jeanne Lee, Ran Blake
The Newest Sound Around
(BMG)
'It’s Alright Ma (I’m only Bleeding)' (Dylan) – Bob Dylan
Subterranean Homesick Blues
(Sony)
'It’s Alright Ma (I’m only Bleeding)' (Dylan) – Ran Blake, Dominique Eade
Town and Country
(Sunnyside)
'Wives and Lovers' (Bacharach) – Cécile McLorin Salvant
For One to Love
(Mack Avenue)
'Everything I’ve Got Belongs to You' (Rodgers, Hart) – Cécile McLorin Salvant
The Window
(Mack Avenue)
'The Sweetest Sounds' (Rodgers) – Cécile McLorin Salvant
The Window
(Mack Avenue)
'Trouble is a Man' (Wilder) – Cécile McLorin Salvant
The Window
(Mack Avenue)
'Somewhere' (Bernstein, Sondheim) – Cécile McLorin Salvant
The Window
(Mack Avenue)
'J’ai l’cafard' (Despax et al) – Damia
Les goélands
(Parlophone)
'J’ai l’cafard' (Despax et al) – Cécile McLorin Salvant
The Window
(Mack Avenue)
