StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Through "The Window" with Cécile McLorin Salvant

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring performances by singer Cécile McLorin Salvant, who's returning to St. Louis to perform next Saturday, October 5 at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

This is the third visit to St. Louis for Salvant, who performed here previously in May 2015 and then again in November 2017, both times at The Sheldon. While she already was considered a rising star when she first performed here, this time she returns as one of the most talked-about and critically acclaimed singers in jazz today.

Originally from Miami, she first came to wide attention in 2010 by winning first prize in the annual Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Salvant subsequently signed with Mack Avenue Records and in 2013 released her debut album Womanchild. It was nominated for a Grammy Award the following year, and also helped Salvant win first place in four different categories in the 2014 DownBeat Critics Poll.

Since then, Salvant has toured extensively in the US and overseas, and has released three more albums - For One to Love in 2015, Dreams and Daggers in 2017, and The Window in 2018 - each of which won a Grammy Award in the "Best Jazz Vocal Album" category, with Dreams and Daggers also named "Jazz Album of the Year" in the 2018 DownBeat Critic's Poll.

Riding a streak like that, it's unsurprising that Salvant now looms large in just about any discussion of contemporary jazz singing. Today's collection of recent performances on video provides audible evidence of what all the fuss is about, starting up above in the first video, which shows her singing "Somehow I Could Never Believe" in April of this year on NPR's "Live from Here."

After the jump, you can see two more videos recorded during that same performance, "Ghost Song" and "If You Feel Like Singing, Sing."

The next video capture's Salvant's performance in October 2018 for NPR Music's "Tiny Desk Concert," during which she sang "Fog," "Look At Me," "Monday," and "Omie Wise".

That's followed by a full set of music recorded in July 2018 at the Heineken Jazzaldia festival in San Sebastian, Spain, and finally, another full set recorded in May of this year at Lieu Unique in Nantes, France.

For more about Cécile McLorin Salvant, listen to her interviews from November 2018 on NPR's "Fresh Air" and on Jazziz magazine's "Backstage Pass" podcast, and read the feature story about her in November 2018 issue of Jazz Times.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...