30 years ago, the late author and Princeton University Professor Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature—the first native-born American to receive that honor since John Steinbeck. Princeton University Concerts joins the Princeton University Library and the McCarter Theatre Center in a campus-wide celebration of this anniversary by commissioning MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist and composer Cecile McLorin Salvant to create a brand-new work inspired by Morrison’s archives, which are housed at the university and will be on display at Firestone Library in a much-anticipated exhibition in the spring. This tribute to the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the author’s legacy will be a rare glimpse into previously unknown aspects of her creative life and practice, as expressed through an equally rare, genre-defying artist— “one of the greatest jazz singers of her generation, although that label sells her short.” (Rolling Stone)
Glowing Embers, a hand-drawn “zine” by vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, inspired by the Toni Morrison archive at the Princeton University Library:
