Cecile McLorin Salvant

Described by the New York Times in 2015 as "the finest jazz singer to emerge in the last decade", Cécile McLorin Salvant – born on August 28, 1989, in Miami, Florida - is jazz performer lauded by critics for the agility, timbre and projection of her voice on standards and original songs that blend jazz, blues and folk music. Often compared to the great Sarah Vaughan, she has been nominated for three Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album, winning with her 2015 release For One to Love , which went to Number 2 on Billboard's Jazz Albums Chart. Born in Miami, her father is from Haiti and her mother from France. She learned to play piano as a child, sang in the Miami Choral Society and studied privately with teachers such as the University of Miami's Edward Walker.She spent some time in France studying at the Darius Milhaud Conservatory and won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010 when she was 21. She recorded her debut album, Cécile & the Jean-François Bonnel Paris Quintet , that year and it reached Number 22 on the Billboard Jazz Albums Chart when it was released in the US in 2010. Her second release, WomanChild, went to Number 3 in 2014 and earned her first Grammy Award nomination. Dreams and Daggers (2017) peaked at Number 2 on the Jazz Chart and won her second Grammy Award. Her 2018 album The Window earned her a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal album.Cécile McLorin Salvant was honored with the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize in 2019 and was the MaCarthur Genius Grant Winner in 2020. Four years after the release of The Window, Cécile McLorin Salvant returned in 2022 with the album Ghost Song, followed by the French-language album Mélusine (2023), based on a medieval European legend. In 2025, Oh Snap was released, an album with electronic beats, samba grooves, and folk.