Listening to Cecile McLorin Salvant is like strolling through a sonic art gallery of impressionists. The vocalist creates audible framed works of art, each with its own story and style, allowing you to examine each brush stroke, be it water color or oil. This prismatic two disc collection has her in a variety of settings; then in the studio on at the Village Vanguard with her team of Aaron Diehl/p, Paul Sikivic/b and Lawrance Leathers/dr and then intermittently supplemented with Mozartian/Bartokian chamber strings supplied by the Catalyst Quartet.
Her delivery can change like Mariano Rivera, as she gets vaudevillian with the striding Diehl on pieces such as “Sam Jones’ Blues” and “Wild Women Don’t .” In front of an audience, she can be conversant and coy as she demonstrates with Likivic on “You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me” and is cabaret casual on “Si J’etais Blanche.” Her voice, almost always hushed and understate, is still able to show Sarah Vaughan-style flexibility, even with the bedroom eyes’d “Tell Me What They’re Saying Can’t Be True” with Leathers’ tender brushes, while throwing in a couple of Billie Holiday-themed slurs on the piano parlor’d “You’ve Got to Give Me Some.”
While she’s able to bop with the best as on the peppy “Runnin’ Wild” and “Nothing Like You,” she’s always holding back, slying behind the beat. With the strings she can dramatically hold a simple word like “her” and let it float during “Fascination” and go to South of France pastels with her vocals hovering on “More.” Not as much an album of songs as a musical trip through Monet’s home in Giverny. Up there with Lizz Wrights Grace for Vocal Album of the Year.