2015 · Album
For One to Love
Mack Avenue · Released: September 4, 2015 · Album Number: Third studio album
Salvant's Third Statement, Refined and Unhurried
For One to Love shows Salvant at ease with herself, singing standards and originals with newfound confidence.
By her third album, Cécile McLorin Salvant had already proven she could dig into jazz history and make it speak in the present. For One to Love (2015) follows WomanChild (2013), and the difference is clear: where that record felt like a young singer still finding her voice among giants, this one sounds like someone who has made her peace with the past and is ready to live in it on her own terms. The album trades some of the searching intensity of her earlier work for a quieter confidence. She's not trying to prove anything anymore.
The songwriting here matters—several originals sit alongside the standards, and they don't feel like filler. There's a balance that wasn't always there before. Salvant can inhabit a lyric written by Rodgers and Hart with the same ease she brings to her own material, which is harder than it sounds. Critics picked up on this steadiness: AllMusic, Boston Globe, and Jazzwise all gave it four stars, recognizing something solid and well-considered in the work. It's not flashy. It doesn't announce itself. It just sits down and sings.
This is a good place to return to if you've heard her earlier records and wondered where she'd go next. It's neither her debut nor her peak, but it's the record where you feel her settling into what she actually wants to do—which is sing beautifully, without apology or excess.
Where next?
More by Cécile McLorin Salvant
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