Cécile McLorin Salvant makes big orchestral jazz feel refreshingly intimate on 2026’s With Every Breath I Take. Her first fully orchestral album, it finds the Grammy-winning singer joined by the Netherlands’ Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckely, with arrangements by Darcy James Argue. Also by her side is her trio, featuring longtime pianist Sullivan Fortner along with bassist David Wong and drummer Kush Abadey.
Rather than simply picking a set of well-worn standards, Salvant curates her choices, embracing songs that speak to a woman’s point of view and experience in the world. It’s a vibe she underscores whether revisiting her own “Left Over” off 2015’s For One to Love or echoing that song’s heartbreak on Buddy Johnson’s soulful…
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When the US-raised French-Haitian singer Cécile McLorin Salvant played Ronnie Scott’s for the first time as a 25-year-old in 2014, the awestruck atmosphere recognised a young multilingual jazz artist of rare gifts – but it was soon apparent that her sublime technical skill as a singer wasn’t the half of it.
Salvant had all the jazz tools: coolly hip timing, improv quick-wittedness, the crystalline sonic clarity of her early model, Sarah Vaughan. But she could also conjure up a dream world of her own that listeners would willingly follow her into. Her new album, Oh Snap, is a set of 12 originals and one cover that she created on her own over four years, before adding her band. She experimented for the first time with…