Dame Iseut, by Almucs de Castelnau (female troubadour, 12th century)
Cécile McLorin Salvant, voice
Sullivan Fortner, harpsichord
Keita Ogawa, percussion
In July 2023 MetLiveArts welcomed three-time GRAMMY®-winning jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant for a digital-exclusive in the Unicorn Tapestries Room at The Met Cloisters. For Salvant, also a skilled textile artist, the tapestries have been a source of inspiration. Much of her music relates vivid stories of mythical creatures-her acclaimed “Ogresse,” which tells of a fantastical, forest-dwelling monster-woman, premiered at The Met in 2018. Now, alongside several of her closest collaborators, Salvant creates a program that reimagines songs from her latest album, “Mélusine,” drawing on the beloved Unicorn Tapestries’ mythological grandeur and themes of corporeal and ethereal love.
Salvant’s upbeat “Dame Iseut” casts a twist on a work of 12th-century trobairitz (female troubadour) Almucs de Castelnau. Usually of noble lineage, trobairitzes were the first known female composers of Western secular music, often performing for noble courts in what is now the South of France. For “Dame Iseut,” Salvant sings the work’s original lyrics in Occitan-a once-dominant Romance language that today is severely endangered-as well as a new Haitian Creole translation fashioned by her father, the Haitian-born physician Alix Salvant.
For more information and to view the full series of Salvant’s Cloisters performances, please visit www.metmuseum.org/events/prog...
Cécile McLorin Salvant appears courtesy of Nonesuch Records.
Recorded on Wednesday, July 5, 2022 in the Unicorn Tapestries Room, Gallery 17, The Met Cloisters
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