Cecile McLorin Salvant Oh Snap LP

Cécile McLorin Salvant's 2025 album, Oh Snap, comprises twelve very personal songs by Salvant—plus a cover of a verse from the Commodores' 1977 hit "Brick House"—mostly recorded outside of a traditional studio environment and showcasing her genre-spanning tastes and influences. The album features longtime collaborators Sullivan Fortner, Yasushi Nakamura, and Kyle Poole, as well as cameos from singers June McDoom and Kate Davis.

The MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy®-winning singer and composer wrote these short, intimate songs as part of a creative quest: to place spontaneity and joy at the center of her writing process. She originally recorded them alone, at home, never intending for them to be released, using digital tools and effects that she had never played with before, like GarageBand, Logic, AutoTune, Midi plugins, drum loops, vocal effects, reverb, and filters. The songs reflect Salvant's wide-ranging musical influences from her 1990s childhood in Miami—from boy bands to grunge to classical to folk—and include party tracks with beats, samba grooves, and quiet folk songs.

"I felt I had lost a connection to music because it was something that I felt I should do in a certain way and do well," she says. "I thought, 'How can I bring music back in close to me, intimately? ... What would I build if I could just build it alone, based on who I am?' I was thinking about how free and playful I am with drawing, which I have no training in, but which gives me so much joy ... I thought, 'How could I approach music this way? How could I use music as a way of journaling?'"

Salvant says of the title track, "I had a very, very specific sound for the vocal that I got through tinkering with these GarageBand and Logic effects and vocal reverbs and things like that. When I started working with Jack DeBoe, who mixed the record, I had a really specific idea of how I wanted the vocal to sound. I am more willing to mess with my voice and make it sound messier and crazier and less clear than others are. Jack, thankfully, was so willing to go there with me and try a bunch of different things ... it was a lot of fun and it was so empowering."

Cécile McLorin Salvant, a 2020 MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy® Award winner, is a singer and composer bringing historical perspective, a renewed sense of drama, and an enlightened musical understanding to both jazz standards and her own original compositions. Classically trained, steeped in jazz, blues, and folk, and drawing from musical theater and vaudeville, Salvant embraces a wide-ranging repertoire that broadens the possibilities for live performance.

"Cécile McLorin Salvant's musical vocabulary is a marvel," says the Associated Press. Mojo says: "Salvant's imaginative backdrops ... double dare her audience to follow her next flight of fancy." Slate calls her "one of the greatest singers ... of our time," and Stereogum exclaims: "Salvant is rapidly moving beyond the boundaries of jazz, and I'm gonna follow wherever she leads."

Salvant's performances range from spare duets for voice and piano to instrumental trios to orchestral ensembles. Her unreleased work Ogresse is an ambitious long-form musical fable based on oral fairy tales from the nineteenth century that explores the nature of freedom and desire in a racialized, patriarchal world. Salvant studied at the Université Pierre Mendès-France. She has performed at national and international venues and festivals such as the Newport Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Village Vanguard, and the Kennedy Center. Salvant is also a visual artist. Her previous Nonesuch albums, Ghost Song (2022) and Mélusine (2023), were both nominated for Grammy® Awards, as well as receiving critical accolades.