CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT

AND THE AARON DIEHL TRIO

EVENT PARTNER

2018 SCHOOLFEST PARTNER

TEACHER RESOURCE KIT

CONTENTS
1. CURRICULUM & LEARNING AREAS

2. ARTISTS

3. ABOUT THE SHOW

4. ABOUT THE ARTISTS

5. BIOGRAPHIES & STATEMENTS

6. FURTHER RESOURCES & READING

A. VIDEOS/TRAILER
B. REVIEWS
C. OTHER RELATED VIDEOS/MATERIALS

7. YOUR SHOW EXPERIENCE

8. BACK IN YOUR CLASSROOM
2018 SCHOOLFEST
CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT
AND THE AARON DIEHL TRIO
CURRICULUM LINKS Music

ACHIEVEMENT OBJECTIVES & LEARNING OUTCOMES

Level 4–8

Music
AS91094 - 1.5 Demonstrate knowledge of conventions
used in music
AS91275 - 2.5 Demonstrate aural understanding through
written representation
AS91276 - 2.6 Demonstrate knowledge of conventions in
a range of music scores
AS91422 - 3.7 Analyse a substantial music work
AS91423 - 3.8 Examine the influence of context on a
substantial music work
AS91425 - 3.10 Research a music topic

TEACHERS SCHOOLFEST 101 PACK

DOWNLOAD HERE
This is your guide to getting the most out of your SchoolFest experience. The pack includes
top tips for attending performances, dress code, schools’ ticket collection, Festival venues,
accessibility and more.
ARTISTS
Cécile McLorin Salvant Vocals
Aaron Diehl Piano
Paul Sikivie Bass
Kyle Poole Drums
“She has poise,
elegance,
soul, humor,
sensuality,
power,
virtuosity,
range, insight,
intelligence,
depth and
grace. Yeah.”
W Y N TO N M A R S A L I S
ABOUT THE SHOW
Grammy Award-winner Cécile McLorin Salvant is the hottest voice in American jazz right
now.
“You only get a singer like this once in a generation or two,” said jazz giant Wynton Marsalis,
who’s such a fan of this Miami-born vocalist, that he invited her to perform with his Jazz at
Lincoln Center Orchestra.
Channeling not only the sass, the sorrow and the sweeping ease of jazz’s greatest vocalists
– Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Sarah Vaughan but the soul, style and spirit
of many of jazz’s lesser known innovators including Mildred Bailey, Big Bill Broonzy, Babs
Gonzales, Ruth Etting, Blossom Dearie and Valaida Snow. – Salvant’s bell-clear soprano
and unusually juicy bass is a new, fresh voice of its very own: rich, striking and endlessly
nuanced.
With an entrancing stage presence and performance of pure emotion, she reinvigorates
jazz standards – finding fresh thrills within vaudeville, the blues, gospel and folk music too.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Cécile McLorin Salvant
GRAMMY® Award-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant has had a remarkable rise
to stardom in her professional career, and she’s taking another big leap forward with
Dreams and Daggers, her third album for Mack Avenue Records.

McLorin Salvant first made waves in the jazz world when, at the urging of her mother,
she entered the most prestigious jazz vocal competition in the world. Having
nearly missed the submission deadline, she made it to the finals as their youngest
performer and was selected by an illustrious panel of judges – Dee Dee Bridgewater,
Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling, Patti Austin, and Al Jarreau – as the 2010 Thelonious Monk
Competition winner. While she had bypassed the traditional U.S. conservatories
and jazz schools, McLorin Salvant studied at France’s Aix-en Provence before
returning for the competition’s semi-finals, the judges noted her remarkable voice
and striking ability to inhabit the emotional space of every song she heard and turn
it into a compelling experience.

In 2013, McLorin Salvant made her Mack Avenue Records debut with WomanChild,
garnering a GRAMMY® Award-nomination, NPR Music’s pick for “Best Jazz Vocal
Album of the Year,” and three placements in DownBeat’s critic’s poll as “Jazz Album
of the Year,” “Top Female Vocalist,” and “Best Female Jazz Up and Coming Artist of
the Year,” among many other accolades. Her 2015 follow up release, For One To Love,
won the GRAMMY® Award for “Best Jazz Vocal Album.”

McLorin Salvant’s music has been featured in multiple Chanel “Chance” campaigns
and is included in the soundtrack for HBO’s film, Bessie. New York Times Magazine
included her recording of “Trolley Song” as one of “25 Songs That Tell Us Where
Music Is Going,” The New Yorker profiled her at age 27, Vanity Fair featured her in their
“Millennials That Are Shaking Up The Jazz World” piece, Essence Magazine noted
her as one of “13 Emerging Black Women in Music,” and Gilles Peterson included her
as an “Artist to Watch” in The Atlantic. Learn more about McLorin Salvant on NPR’s “All
Things Considered” and “Fresh Air,” New York Times’ “Close at Hand,” or watch her
perform on BBC’s “Later… with Jools Holland” and PBS’ “The Tavis Smiley Show.”
BIOGRAPHIES &
STATEMENTS
Cécile McLorin Salvant (vocals) grew up in a bilingual household in Miami, the child of
a French mother and Haitian father. She started piano studies at age five, and at eight
began singing with the Miami Choral Society. After graduating high school, McLorin
Salvant decided to pursue her education in Aix-en Provence in the south of France. In
this unlikely setting, she embarked on a new career as a jazz performer, while pursuing
a degree in French law and her training as a classical and baroque singer. Her 2016
Grammy Award-winning album, For One To Love may be the defining jazz statement on
romance in the new millennium, a heartfelt album that both embodies the full range of
the American popular song idiom, but distills it into a distinctly personal expression of a
modern day poet-troubadour. “She has poise, elegance, soul, humor, sensuality, power,
virtuosity, range, insight, intelligence, depth and grace,” announced Wynton Marsalis.
“If anyone can extend the lineage of the Big Three—Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and
Ella Fitzgerald—it is this 26-year-old virtuoso,” added Stephen Holden in The New York
Times.

Aaron Diehl (piano) is the 2011 Cole Porter Fellow in Jazz of the American Pianists
Association. His distinctive interpretations of the music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Art
Tatum, Duke Ellington, and other masters pays homage to the tradition while establishing
his own original voice. Diehl has performed with the Wynton Marsalis Septet, the Jazz at
Lincoln Center Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Benny Golson, Hank Jones,
Wycliffe Gordon, Victor Goines, Wessell Anderson and Loren Schoenberg, and has
been featured on Marian McPartland’s NPR radio show Piano Jazz. His international
touring has included major European jazz festivals as well as performances in South
America and Asia. In addition to the Mozart Jazz trio album, he has recently released
Live at Caramoor, from his solo performance at the prestigious festival in the summer of
2008. His latest trio CD is entitled Live at the Players. A native of Columbus, OH, Diehl is
a graduate of The Juilliard School where his teachers included Kenny Barron, Eric Reed
and Oxana Yablonskaya. His honours include Lincoln Center’s prestigious Martin E. Segal
award in 2004, winner of the 2003 Jazz Arts Group Hank Marr Jazz Competition, and
Outstanding Soloist at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2002 Essentially Ellington Competition.
Immediately following graduation from high school he toured with the Wynton Marsalis
Septet. Diehl currently resides in Manhattan where he serves as pianist for St. Joseph of
the Holy Family Church in Harlem.
Paul Sikivie (bass) moved to New York City in 2007 from Florida, seeking training from
the masters of America’s musical art, jazz. His search took him through the classroom and
onto stages across the city and world.
Paul has enjoyed and benefitted from playing with some great musicians: Matt Wilson,
Ted Nash, Johnny O’Neal, Frank Kimbrough, Benny Green, Wycliffe Gordon, Chico
Hamilton, Wes Anderson, Aaron Diehl, Marc Devine and a host of others. He received a
M.M. from Juilliard in 2009, having completed his B.M at the University of North Florida in
2006.

Kyle Poole (drums) hailed by Jazz Speaks as a “young prodigious drummer”, Los
Angeles native Kyle Poole has been residing in New York City since 2011 and continues to
impress wherever his drums take him next. Along with his band of fellow NY jazz upstarts
aptly titled “Poole & the Gang”, Kyle has performed in New York’s most esteemed jazz
clubs, notably Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola & SMOKE Jazz, culminating in a weekly residency
at Small’s Jazz Club lasting nearly 3 years. One of Poole’s chief missions, is to expand
jazz’s audience by incorporating all dance styles of music, reaching back to ragtime &
bebop, while forging ahead all the way to funk, hip-hop & beyond. With the constant
fluctuation of genre, rhythm & harmony, “Poole & the Gang” connects these musical dots
in a uniquely improvised fashion, while audiences worldwide are delighted to simply,
“go with the flow”.
“The finest
jazz singer
to emerge
in the last
decade”
T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S
FURTHER RESOURCES &
READING
VIDEOS/TRAILER

Cécile McLorin Salvant | NZ Festival Trailer

Cécile McLorin Salvant | You’re My Thrill

REVIEWS
“You get a singer like this once in a generation or two.” – Wynton Marsalis

“Salvant has a supple, well-trained voice with spot-on pitch. (No vibrato-teases; no meandering
warbles passing as melisma.) Her low notes go from husky to full-bodied; her high notes float
purely and cleanly. When she scats, it’s not an ego trip but a musical game, where notes and
syllables get to shape-shift.” – The New York Times Magazine

“She had emotional range, too, inhabiting different personas in the course of a song, sometimes
even a phrase—delivering the lyrics in a faithful spirit while also commenting on them, mining
them for unexpected drama and wit.” — The New Yorker

“The finest jazz singer to emerge in the last decade.”– The New York Times

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Dreams and Daggers (Mack Avenue/Southbound)

https://www.elsewhere.co.nz/jazz/8163/cecile-mclorin-salvant-dreams-and-daggers-mack-avenue-southbound/

KidsOutandAbout Jazz Fest Review: Cécile McLorin Salvant

http://rochester.kidsoutandabout.com/content/kidsoutandabout-jazz-fest-review-cecile-mclorin-salvant

Cécile McLorin Salvant on Nick Tipping’s Inside Out – RNZ

http://www.radionz.co.nz/concert/programmes/inside-out/audio/2018621749/inside-out-part-1-11-november-2017
OTHER RELATED VIDEOS/MATERIALS

Videos
Cécile McLorin Salvant - The Making of For One To Love (extended)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyeeKKve5XE

Cecile McLorin Salvant STUNS Crowd In Airport

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLBIqzLkeXQ

Cécile McLorin Salvant - I Didn’t Know What Time it Was (Live at Dizzy’s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G99FfalLFWQ

Cécile McLorin Salvant - Baby Have Pity on Me (live on KCRW)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG2EvNOnwUg

Cécile McLorin Salvant - Wives and Lovers (Uncut)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-andOu0d1Q

Capsulocity.com presents : Cecile McLorin Salvant Sings and Plays “I Must Have That
Man”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=B9Un60REVCI

Cécile McLorin Salvant - Yesterdays - TVJazz.tv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgOghmYGsSY

Cécile McLorin Salvant “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpQ_pWev24w

Cécile McLorin Salvant “John Henry” @Jazz_in_Marciac

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=biqjgEbgb0Y

Cécile McLorin Salvant et Vincent Peirani

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_dy0hfRx58

Cécile McLorin Salvant “Poor Butterfly”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyU7QP2oWQ4

Jazz in Marciac 2015: “Rags, Strides, and Stomps” with Joey Alexander, Sullivan Fort-
ner, and Aaron Diehl
https://youtu.be/nfPELDeoZBE

The Aaron Diehl Trio

https://youtu.be/fzCn0gvngrc

Aaron Diehl - The Making of Space Time Continuum

YOUR SHOW
EXPERIENCE
Before seeing a theatre production
- Research Cécile McLorin Salvant and the Aaron Diehl Trio and the catalogue of works.
Compare and contrast with a study in the history of Jazz.
- Based upon the information that your class has access to (personal knowledge, youtube and
other media, advertising from the NZ Festival, etc.) what are you expecting in the show?

Observations about the performance:

– What captures my attention during the performance?
– What questions do I have about this performance? What is the meaning of the lyrics and
music?
– Were any of your preconceptions about the performance changed? Challenged? Why?
How?
BACK IN YOUR
CLASSROOM
ACTIVITY 1
Positive, negative & interesting

Following the attendance of Cécile McLorin Salvant and the Aaron Diehl Trio, ask your
students to reflect on the questions below. You might choose to have them answer each
individually, in groups for round-table discussions or all together as a class.

1. What was your overall reaction to Cécile McLorin Salvant and the Aaron Diehl Trio?
Did you find the performance compelling? Stimulating? Intriguing? Challenging?
Memorable? Evocative? Unique? Delightful? Meaningful? Explain your reactions.

2. If you were asked to describe Cécile McLorin Salvant and the Aaron Diehl Trio to a
friend who didn’t see the performance using only one sentence, what would that
sentence be?

3. What qualities of Cécile McLorin Salvant were revealed by her action and speech?

4. Study her lyrics and make an enquiry in the main themes of her music repertoire?
ACTIVITY 2
Production technologies used in Cécile McLorin Salvant and the
Aaron Diehl Trio

In the boxes below, describe one example of each production technology you saw in
the show.

1. Lighting How did it help to communicate the ideas of the

show. Why was it effective?

2. Costume How did it help to communicate the ideas of the

show. Why was it effective?

3. Sound/Music How did it help to communicate the ideas of the

show. Why was it effective?
ACTIVITY 3
Write a review

Have your students take on the role of music critic by writing a review of the performance
of Cécile McLorin Salvant and the Aaron Diehl Trio.

A music critic or reviewer is essentially a “professional audience member”, whose

job is to provide reportage of an artists performance through active and descriptive
language for a target audience of readers (for example, their peers, their community, or
those interested in the arts).

Critics/reviewers analyse the musical event to provide a clearer understanding of the

artistic ambitions and intentions of the artist. Finally, the critic offers personal judgment
as to whether the artistic intentions of a production were achieved and effective.

Your performance review should include:

Introduction
• Include the name of the production, production company and key creatives (artists
and musicians).
Body paragraphs
• Tell the reader something about the major themes/ideas of the production.
• Make judgements about the production but make sure you justify your opinions.
Conclusions
• Make an overall recommendation about why people should see this performance.
Don’t forget to include a snappy headline that encapsulates the show.
Note: Encourage your students to email their reviews to the New Zealand Festival
SchoolFest team on schoolfest@festival.co.nz for publication.