Grammy Award Winning Jazz Singer and Composer Cécile McLorin Salvant brings her dynamic voice and storytelling to St. Cecilia Music Center on February 20, 2025

St. Cecilia Music Center (SCMC) brings three time Grammy Award Winning Jazz Vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant to Grand Rapids on Thursday, February 20, 2025 to perform on the Spectactular Jazz Series. Cécile McLorin Salvant, in addition to three consecutive Grammy Awards, won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010 and received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award in 2020.

Executive & Artistic Director of SCMC Cathy Holbrook says, “We are thrilled to bring Cécile McLorin Salvant to the Royce Auditorium stage. Cécile is a tremendous jazz vocal artist and composer with a  passion for storytelling. The audience will be transformed on February 20th when they will hear her amazing voice, finding connections between vaudeville, blues, theater, jazz, baroque, folkloric music and more.” 

Professor, philosopher and activist Angela Y. Davis says about Salvant, “She is, without a doubt, her generation’s most accomplished jazz vocalist…Mélusine, Salvant’s most recent album, is a bold declaration that she is willing to answer the call of her expansive imagination...”

Individual tickets for Cécile McLorin Salvant are $60, $45, and $30 at scmcgr.org or by calling 616-459-2224. (Single tickets have a $4.00 per ticket fee.)

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. 

St. Cecilia Music Center brings four jazz concerts to the Royce Auditorium Stage this season. Along with Joshua Redman Group who performed in October 2024 and jazz vocalist sensation Cécile McLorin Salvant on February 20, two additional concerts will take place in Spring 2025.

• Jazz guitarist Julian Lage and his trio will appear on March 18, 2025, and 
• eight-time GRAMMY Award winner Christian McBride, with his quintet Ursa Major, will perform on April 22, 2025. 

Cécile McLorin Salvant Bio:

Cécile McLorin Salvant, is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings”. 

Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, theater, jazz, baroque and folkloric music. Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor.

Salvant won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010. She has received three consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for “The Window”, “Dreams and Daggers”, and “For One To Love”, and was nominated for the award in 2014 for her album “Woman Child”. 

In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. Nonesuch Records released “Ghost Song” in March 2022, and has since gone onto receive two Grammy Nominations as well as appearing on a number of year end best lists for 2022. On March 24th, 2023 Nonesuch Records released the highly anticipated follow up - “Mélusine”, an album mostly sung in French, along with Occitan, English, and Haitian Kreyòl.  

Born and raised in Miami, Florida, of a French mother and Haitian father, she started classical piano studies at 5, sang in a children’s choir at 8, and started classical voice lessons as a teenager.

Salvant received a bachelor’s in French law from the Université Pierre-Mendes France in Grenoble while also studying baroque music and jazz at the Darius Milhaud Music Conservatory in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Salvant’s latest work, Ogresse, is a musical fable in the form of a cantata that blends genres (folk, baroque, jazz, country). Salvant wrote the story, lyrics, and music. It is arranged by Darcy James Argue for a thirteen-piece orchestra of multi-instrumentalists. Ogresse, both a biomythography and an homage to the Erzulie (as painted by Gerard Fortune) and Sara Baartman, explores fetishism, hunger, diaspora, cycles of appropriation, lies, othering, and ecology. It is in development to become an animated feature-length film, which Salvant will direct.

Salvant makes large-scale textile drawings. Her visual art can now be found at Picture Room in Brooklyn, NY.

Spectacular Jazz Series Tickets

(Single tickets have a $4.00 per ticket fee. All concerts start at 7:30pm.)  

Cécile McLorin Salvant

Thursday, February 20, 2025

A section $60

B section $45

C section $30    

Julian Lage

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

A section $55

B section $40

C section $25    

Christian McBride & Ursa Major

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

A section $70

B section $55

C section $40    

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Tickets

(Single tickets have a $4.00 per ticket fee. All concerts start at 7:30pm.)  

Schubert’s Trout Quintet

Thursday, March 20, 2025

A section $55

B section $40

C section $25

Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence

Thursday, April 24, 2025

A section $55

B section $40

C section $25    

Acoustic Café Folk Series Tickets

(Single tickets have a $4.00 per ticket fee. All concerts start at 7:30pm.)  

The Lone Bellow

Saturday, March 8, 2025

A section $50

B section $35

C section $20

Judy Collins

Thursday, March 13, 2025

A section $65

B section $50

C section $35

The War and Treaty

Friday, March 28, 2025

A section $60

B section $45

C section $30

(Additional Acoustic Café Folk Series Concerts to be announced.)

St. Cecilia Music Center’s mission is to promote the study, appreciation and

performance of music in order to enrich the lives of West Michigan residents. 

The Center fulfills this mission by 

presenting visiting world-class artists in concert, 

providing music education for all ages through our School of Music and 

preserving a historic building for musical activities and community events

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