Sullivan Fortner | Cécile McLorin Salvant: Book of Ayres

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Book of Ayres

Saturday, April 13, 2024
7:30 PM (EDT)

The spellbinding artistry of Cécile McLorin Salvant defies genres and leaves audiences rapt.

A storyteller above all, she returns to our stage with the world premiere of a 92NY 150th anniversary commission, drawing from her brilliance in jazz, expertise in Baroque music, and more:

“Part of my practice is imagining musical family trees and learning from the influences of my influences. Growing up, I wanted to be an opera singer. Opera led me to Baroque music, which led me to early music. I had a similar path with American music.

I gravitate towards forgotten songs, early or maligned instruments, and languages and performance styles on the brink of extinction. I bring this process of excavation into my own writing, blending old and new, exploring language and mythology. I have been making the unoriginal yet concerted effort to move beyond categorizing music by genre. What I am interested in is exploring, celebrating, and making fun of desire, divulging secrets, dredging up the past, looking under the rug.” – Cécile McLorin Salvant

In this new program of curated material – the centerpiece being a new original work and 92NY 150th anniversary commission – Salvant assembles a group of top improvising musicians from genres as disparate as early music and jazz, folk, and electronic music. Performed on synthesizers, flute, theorbo, harpsichord, electronics, and percussion, this blend of organic instruments (built by human hands) and non-analog instruments (engineered by human minds) serves as a unique and colorful backdrop for a new type of folk song. Stories from different tongues across eras and borders, blending early music and vaudeville, Sappho and folkloric material of Europe and the Americas – it’s a universe that could only originate from the mind and only be delivered through the voice of one of this era’s most gifted vocalists and prolific storytellers.

Sullivan Fortner, piano/harpsichord/keyboards
Emi Ferguson, flute
Dušan Balarin, theorbo/lute
Yasushi Nakamura, bass
Keita Ogawa, percussion

Sullivan Fortner is the winner of the 2015 American Pianists Awards.