esperanza spalding

A virtuosic bass player. Her voice is capable of acrobatics. . . . Her lyrics are poetry. —NPR An artist who defies categorization beyond the descriptor ‘brilliant.’ —Isthmus A five-time Grammy winner, humanitarian, activist, and educator, acclaimed jazz bassist and vocalist esperanza spalding has, in her illustrious career, continually and brilliantly married genres, pushed boundaries, and created groundbreaking art. Her work interweaves through various combinations of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, regenerative agriculture, urban land and artist sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love while collaboratively decolonizing within and through her hometown community. She has performed at the Oscars, the Grammys, the Nobel Prize ceremony, and the White House. As a musician, composer, vocalist, and lyricist, spalding is expansive, iterative, shape-shifting, open, and progressively innovative. A voracious and magnetic performer who has shared the stage with Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Janelle Monae, and Prince, spalding is attentively studious towards what the process of playing live presents to the structure of a song.