Spoleto Review: In remixed venues, festival jazz rolls out
Phillip Golub and Cécile McLorin Salvant get the jazz going for the 2025 festival
Editor’s note: Welcome back to Leah, who is jumping into Culture South for Spoleto Festival USA jazz reviews again. Look for more in the festival days to come.
On Friday, May 23, at noon, in line with tradition, on the steps of Charleston, South Carolina’s City Hall, Spoleto Festival USA kicked off to sunny skies and a breezy Brazilian Carnaval beat from the musicians and dancers of Music From The Sole, followed by promising performances by inspired students of the Charleston Jazz Academy.
Poised at the podium, Spoleto Festival USA general director Mena Mark Hanna proclaimed, “In the arts we find truth. In the festival we find each other.” Confetti and church bells marked the moment and the 49th edition of the Spoleto Festival season was made official with hints of excitement and curiosity.
The first week of programming was noticeably light on jazz, a departure from years past where the Cistern Yard at the College of Charleston has served as the quintessential backdrop for the majority of the Wells Fargo Jazz Series.
Phillip Golub in resonant residency
While the indie-folk-pop Front Row series took over the Cistern for the opening Memorial Day Weekend and first full week of the festival, the jazz series quietly opened, indoors, at the newly renovated Albert Simons Recital Hall, just across the street.
On a soggy Sunday afternoon, pianist Phillip Golub eased festival goers into the famed Wells Fargo Jazz Series with his festival three-day, six-show residency. Golub returned to Spoleto, this year as a bandleader and artist-in-residence, after his 2024 debut as a sideman with Leyale Chaker’s ensemble and her operatic debut of Ruinous Gods. His talent shone through, positioning himself to be invited to offer a smorgasbord of sonic offerings, from solo to duo, and finally quintet.
Golub’s opening night solo program was an ethereal treat to whet the appetite. Two days later, his quintet performed at Circular Congregational Church. The venue is a new one for the series and festival, though one the sister Piccolo Spoleto Festival puts to use regularly. Each member of the ensemble was a frangible voice in serving the whole. Each program was an exploration of resonance, in composition and ambiance, texture, tonality, and time.
Cécile McLorin Salvant and Spoleto Festival Orchestra
It was the midweek performance by vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant at the Gaillard Center that served the main course for the first week of the jazz series. With Every Breath I Take quite literally took the breath away of a mesmerized audience with delectable arrangements for a full-bodied orchestra and McLorin Salvant’s exquisite voice.
The stage was equally brimming with the 100-person Spoleto Festival Orchestra under the direction of Clark Rundell, joined by McLorin Salvant’s trusted trio, featuring Sullivan Fortner on piano, David Wong on bass and Kush Abadey on drums. The evening featured arrangements by Darcy James Argue, who imbued fresh orchestral textures on classic and lesser known show tunes and jazz standards for an uninterrupted program.
As she took center stage with her signature style between eclectic elegance and decadent comfort in a forest green and golden frock with brighter green slip on footwear, she embodied the very essence of Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady,” her first selection of a well-curated program. She continued to unfold in layers of complexity, each tune telling its own story while fitting into a larger body of work. Argue’s inventive scoring only gave McLorin Salvant ample room to navigate her eclectic material with nuance and emotional profundity, a dream for any musician, let alone singer.
While not new to the Spoleto stage, Cécile McLorin Salvant refreshingly reaffirmed her place among the most compelling jazz vocalists of her generation. Her combination of theatrical storytelling and musical intentionality was virtuosity at play. The Charleston Gaillard Center served as the venue, both grand and intimate — a consummate capsule for holding the delicate power between the vast orchestra and McLorin Salvant’s intricate voice.
From her first breath of the evening, the Haitian-French-American vocalist held the audience in rapt attention. Her voice, which can move from a husky whisper to a soaring operatic vibrato in an instant, is robust. Her phrasing and delivery - from every pause to linger, and slightest tilt of the head - masterful. A song becomes a living narrative, filled with characters, contradictions, and subtle shifts in tone and timbre.
Throughout the evening, she moved seamlessly between jazz standards, contemporary reinterpretations, and one original composition, “Left Over,” for which she accompanied herself on piano, creating a kaleidoscope of mood and color. Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” was haunting and evocative between arrangement and delivery. Cécile McLorin Salvant squeezed every last drop of soul from each lyric she wafted between speaking and singing.
Another highlight of the evening was the arrangement of French composer Michel Legrand’s “Je ne pourrai jamais vivre sans toi" with lyrics by Jacques Demyfilm, from the 1964 film by Catherine Deneuve, Les Parapluies De Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). McLorin Salvant opted to sing them in their original French, painting an emotionally resonant scene of heartbreaking acceptance, longing, and nostalgia. Every word was weighted with meaning and every note rang clear as a bell over the push and pull of an orchestra in full cinematic splendor.
Beyond her technical ease and brilliance is her palpable presence. Whether offering a sly smile during a tongue-in-cheek lyric or holding a dramatic silence before a climactic phrase, her connection with the material and the audience is absolute. Adding to the effect was her enigmatic shadow perfectly mirroring her every move in grandeur stage right. She doesn’t simply sing songs—she inhabits them.
Spoleto Festival USA, with its emphasis on cross-disciplinary performance and cultural diversity, proved an ideal setting for an artist like McLorin Salvant, whose work defies easy categorization. The orchestral arrangements by Darcy James Argue performed by the Spoleto Festival Orchestra added an even greater dimension of sophistication. The performance became more than a concert—it was a fully realized artistic statement.
In a festival that prides itself on the innovative and the unexpected, Cécile McLorin Salvant stood out not just as a musician, but as a dramatist, a historian, and a conjurer of deep feeling. Her Spoleto 2025 performance will surely be remembered as one of the high points of this year—a testament to the enduring power of song to enchant, provoke, and connect.
After her rendition of Buddy Johnson’s “Ever Since the One I’ve Loved Been Gone,” a spellbound audience would bring McLorin Salvant back to the stage for an encore, performing “I Know I’ll See You Again” with the final lyric “I’ll love you till I die. Goodbye.” Though it didn’t feel like goodbye at all, rather a signature McLorin Salvant dramatic pause for what’s to come.
Jazz forward
The week ahead is chock full of a tasty palette for one’s choosing. The cross-pollination of performers will be in full swing for week two, with Charleston’s own, Quentin Baxter, featured with the Kronos Quartet on Monday night at the Charleston Music Hall.
Baxter will join trumpeter Etienne Charles with his highly anticipated Gullah Roots, headlining as the only Wells Fargo Jazz Series performance at the Cistern. Acclaimed pianist Vijay Iyer is on the bill with an all-star band at Dock Street Theatre accompanying poet aja monet, then on to Sottile Theatre for another notable performance with festival alums, bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. McLorin Salvant’s pianist, Sullivan Fortner, can be seen with another artist-in-residence, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, to punctuate this year’s jazz series.
In the spirit of Spoleto and stirring of Cécile McLorin Salvant’s performance, director Mena Mark Hanna’s opening ceremony question rings true: “What else may we become?”
 | A guest post by
|