Cécile McLorin Salvant is a Grammy Award–winning composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings.” Salvant has developed a passion for storytelling and finding the connections between vaudeville, blues, folk traditions from around the world, theater, jazz, and baroque music.

Salvant is an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor. Salvant won the Thelonius Monk competition in 2010. She has received Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for three consecutive albums, The Window, Dreams and Daggers, and For One To Love, and was nominated for the award in 2014 for her album WomanChild. In 2020, Salvant received the MacArthur Fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. Ghost Song, Salvant’s debut for Nonesuch Records, was released in March 2022 to critical acclaim, and has gone on to receive two Grammy nominations.

Salvant’s latest work, Ogresse, is a musical fable in the form of a cantata that blends genres (folk, baroque, jazz, country). Salvant wrote the story, lyrics, and music. It is arranged by Darcy James Argue for a thirteen-piece orchestra of multi-instrumentalists. Ogresse, both a biomythography and an homage to the Erzulie (as painted by Gerard Fortune) and Sara Baartman, explores fetishism, hunger, diaspora, cycles of appropriation, lies, othering, and ecology. It is in development to become an animated feature-length film, which Salvant will direct.

Grammy Award–winning pianist Sullivan Fortner issued Aria (2015), Moments Preserved (2018) and Solo Game (2024) to critical acclaim, the lattermost receiving 4-star reviews in DownBeat and Telerama Magazine. His 2025 release Southern Nights features Peter Washington and Marcus Gilmore. Winner of the 2024 DownBeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Jazz Group: Sullivan Fortner Trio, the New Orleans native has worked with Wynton Marsalis, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Paul Simon, Diane Reeves, Etienne Charles and John Scofield, Ambrose Akinmusire, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Stefon Harris, Kassa Overall, Tivon Pennicott, Peter Bernstein, Nicholas Payton, Billy Hart, Gary Bartz, Chief Adjuah, and Roy Hargrove. His works and insights have been featured in culture drivers from The New York Times to The Root. Further accolades include the American Pianists Association’s Cole Porter Fellowship, Leonore Annenberg Arts Fellowship, the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, the Shifting Foundation Grant, and the Western Jazz Presenters Grant.