Cécile McLorin Salvant Orchestrates Unrequited Love on “Left Over”

By Daniel Okafor

Cécile McLorin Salvant has released “Left Over” with the Metropole Orkest, a song that welds Selena’s “Dreaming of You” to an e.e. cummings sonnet. The track appears on her orchestral album ‘With Every Breath I Take’, out now on Nonesuch Records.

The pairing sounds improbable. It isn’t.

What inspired the song?

Salvant wrote “Left Over” more than a decade ago. She drew on two very different portraits of romantic longing. The first was Selena’s pop ballad “Dreaming of You,” with its hopeful vision of love ahead. The second was cummings’ sonnet “it may not always be so,” a poem about the vulnerability that comes with deep attachment.

Together they give the song its emotional architecture: romantic imagination set against the ache of love that goes unanswered. Salvant also plays piano on the recording.

“This was the first song I wrote where I really felt like there was something there,” she said.

She admits a second motive. She wanted the experience of playing piano alongside an orchestra. A charming confession, and a practical one.

Who made the album?

Jules Buckley conducts the Metropole Orkest (the Dutch ensemble, founded in 1945, known for crossing genres). Darcy James Argue, the composer and bandleader behind the 18-piece ensemble Secret Society, wrote the arrangements.

Argue brings jazz tradition and contemporary ideas into his orchestral textures. Buckley, the orchestra’s chief conductor, has worked with Snarky Puppy, Gregory Porter, Tori Amos, Michael Kiwanuka and Basement Jaxx.

The Metropole Orkest’s own résumé runs from Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie to Herbie Hancock, Brian Eno and Jacob Collier. That range makes it a natural partner for a singer who treats genre as a suggestion rather than a rule.

Where does this sit in Salvant’s career?

The three-time Grammy winner has moved through jazz, blues, folk, classical music and musical theatre. Her previous albums — ‘Ghost Song’, ‘Mélusine’ and ‘Oh Snap’ — show an artist drawn to history, theatrical storytelling and interpretation.

‘With Every Breath I Take’ gives both familiar songs and original compositions a full orchestral setting, pairing Salvant’s interpretive instincts with the possibilities of a large ensemble.

There’s also ‘Ogresse’, her long-form musical fairy tale, now being developed as an animated feature. The orchestra album is one more room in a house that keeps adding wings.

Why watch the video?

The recording-session video for “Left Over” places the musicians and their shared performance at the centre. It shows how an original composition takes on new possibilities when an ensemble of this scale interprets it.

For Salvant, the song connects the writer she was a decade ago with the artist she has become. The album suggests the next question: where an artist this curious goes once she’s absorbed the orchestra.