Jazz Articles about Esperanza Spalding

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Teens Turn to Jazz As Popular Music Continues to Suck

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
April 1, 2011

If you were one of the many surprised by Esperanza Spalding's upset of teen sensation Justin Bieber for Best New Artist at the most recent Grammy Awards, then you may be missing out on one of the most promising developments in Jazz since the advent of the Flapper. Turns out that modern teenagers, sick of cloying Auto-Tuned “singing" and repetitive “uhn-chik uhn-chik uhn-chik" dance rhythms, are increasingly turning to Jazz as a remedy to the bland, soulless pop they're being ...

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Esperanza Spalding: The Intimate Balance

by Esther Berlanga-Ryan
February 14, 2011

To celebrate Esperanza Spalding's Grammy award win as “Best New Artist," we're rerunning this September 2010 interview. Enjoy!Fans of classical music and jazz have argued about music for years. If Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Duke Ellington had ever met, they may have looked at each other in awe--right before debating about bars and notes and solos... and, perhaps, the music would have been flowing just as easy as words. The time when classically trained musicians looked down on ...

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Esperanza Spalding Chamber Music Society at Knight Theater

by Mark F. Turner
October 8, 2010

Esperanza SpaldingKnight TheaterCharlotte, North CarolinaSeptember 24, 2010Having had little exposure to Esperanza Spalding's music, some questions were answered by her visit to the Knight Theater on September 24th. Part of Charlotte's two-day Sunset Jazz Festival, it was the prodigy-turned jazz phenom's first appearance in the city. The concert dovetailed with Chamber Music Society (Heads Up International, 2010), the young singer/bassist's third release, and with more than three quarters of the 1150 seats filled, the venue ...

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Esperanza Spalding: Chamber Music Society

by Eugene Holley, Jr.
August 29, 2010

The jazz world hasn't been the same ever since the twenty-something Esperanza Spalding--the Oregon-born, Texas-based bassist/singer/composer/educator--burst on the scene at the change of the century. Her story as a self-taught, home schooled prodigy who graduated from Berklee and became that institution's youngest instructor; who gigged with everybody from Patti Austin and Pat Metheny to Joe Lovano; and who released two critically-acclaimed CDs as a leader (the last one stayed on the Billboard jazz charts for seventy weeks), is already the ...

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Esperanza Spalding: Chamber Music Society

by Ernest Barteldes
August 3, 2010

On the opening track of her much-lauded, self-titled major label debut, Esperanza (Heads Up, 2008 ), bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding covered Milton Nascimento's timeless gem, “Ponta de Areia." Rather than covering another of the singer/composer's tunes on Chamber Music Society, Spalding recruits Nascimento to perform on her own “Apple Blossoms." It's but one example of a highly intriguing set that blends her classical training with jazz, pop and soul tendencies.This might seem to be a risky endeavor, but not ...

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Shooting Star: Esperanza Spalding in Paris

by David Miller
December 16, 2009

Esperanza SpaldingNew MorningParis, FranceNovember 24, 2009 The heavy drumbeat pierced the air, and the sellout crowd, believing the show to have started, slowly put down their drinks and turned to face the stage. It took some longer than others, but soon all realized that Esperanza Spalding, she whose name was on the bill for the evening, had yet to grace the stage. As it turned out, her band was giving her an introduction by way ...

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Esperanza Spalding Live at Central Park Summerstage

by Ernest Barteldes
July 4, 2009

Esperanza Spalding Central Park Summerstage New York, New York June 28, 2009

The Oregon-born bassist and vocalist seems to have found her voice as an entertainer. At least comparing what we saw last Sunday with her performances at the Jazz Standard earlier this year, one could notice that Spalding has developed a fully-fledged stage persona that in turn helped elevate her music to much greater heights.

Casually dressed in jeans and a tan ...