American soprano Jessye Norman just announced that she has chosen jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant as the next recipient of the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize. Norman was awarded the 12th Glenn Gould Prize in 2018, which gave her $100,000 and the honour of choosing the recipient of the Protégé Prize this year.
Worth $15,000, the prize is given to "an outstanding young artist who shows the promise of an exceptional lifetime contribution to enriching the human condition through the arts" — similar to the promise of a young Glenn Gould.
“Singer, songwriter…a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which light up every note she sings," Norman explained via statement. "There is an intense, yet quiet confidence in her music-making that I find compelling and thoroughly enjoyable."
Multi-Grammy Award winner McLorin Salvant released her newest album, The Window, in September 2018, and it hit multiple best-of lists by the end of the year, including ones belonging to Billboard and NPR.
“You get a singer like this once in a generation or two,” Wynton Marsalis told the New Yorker in May 2017.
McLorin Salvant will perform at the prize's award ceremony and concert, titled The Glenn Gould Prize Celebrates Jessye Norman, on Feb. 20, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Norman will present McLorin Salvant with her prize at the event.
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