She articulates clearly, almost academically: "What happens when the foundation of a relationship is guilt, not love?" It is a short lecture on the false basis of love relationships entitled "Obligation" - presented by a 32-year-old jazz professor.

The auditorium in the Cologne Philharmonie hangs on her every word and sometimes bursts into spontaneous applause when she has sung a breakneck passage with ease or made a joke with the pianist Sullivan Fortner.

For example about the barefoot shoes that she wears to have better grounding when singing, but which she still finds getting used to.

He, Fortner, accompanies her in socks, whereby accompaniment is a blatant understatement for his virtuoso and yet always reserved game, which serves the evening's protagonist.

Jan Wiele

Editor in the Feuilleton.

  • Follow I follow

To describe Cécile McLorin Salvant, who grew up in Miami and studied jazz singing in France, as an insider tip would seem absurd, since her debut was twelve years ago and she has already won the Grammy in the category "Best Jazz Vocal Album" an incredible three times .

She has also been celebrated for performances in Germany, and yet her characteristic name has perhaps not become enough of a term - the term for an impressive revival and modernization of classical jazz singing based on the Great American Songbook.

She often appears as an interpreter and also in Cologne sings more foreign than her own songs, but as her recently released album "Ghost Song" proves, she also knows how to mix both homogeneously.

She combines Irish songs with quite adventurous jazz and Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" with the musical tradition.

Some people continue to turn up their noses at jazz covers – and the fact that there are sometimes economic reasons for young artists to interpret established, recognizable melodies cannot be entirely denied.

But who hears how McLorin Salvant brings both a classic like "The Gentleman is a Dope" by Rodgers and Hammerstein to perfection in Cologne and an elegiac version of "Pirate Jenny" from the Threepenny Opera, which between Lotte Lenya and Nina Simone something quite creates something of his own, can no longer gain anything from such criticism.

Thunderstruck

McLorin Salvant himself doesn't seem to care at all.

That evening she performs three songs from the Broadway musical Gypsy, which premiered in 1959, and they all sound fantastic.

After appearing in various band contexts, she almost seems to have found a musical life partner in Sullivan Fortner, so blindly do the two understand each other on stage.

Anyone who still had any doubts about the singer's originality will see her dispelled when she performs her new ballad "Thunderclouds": Sometimes you have to look into a deep well to see the sky, it says.

And when Salvant's voice jumps effortlessly through the octaves, this sky tears open.