KCOOLMUZIQ said:

She looks like Prince new girlfriend Andy Allo...

Wrong. Allo looks like Esperanza. Don't flip it around.

She's on the April cover of Bass Player magazine. It's on newsstands now.

I agree they look like twins: http://blacren.com/wp-con...yallo2.jpg

JoeBala said:

I agree they look like twins: http://blacren.com/wp-con...yallo2.jpg

Rallying The Bass

April 2012

'What's it like making music once you've made it into the mainstream?" an audience member asked Esperanza Spalding during the opening roundtable of this year's EMP Pop Conference, a gathering of some 2,000 musicians, critics, professors and students at New York University late last month.

It's the same as when you haven't made it into the mainstream, really," Ms. Spalding said. "At least it can be. It all depends on what you do once you're there." Ms. Spalding's unexpected 2011 Grammy Award for Best New Artist—the first such award for a jazz musician—inspired incredulous online protests from Justin Bieber fans and thrust her charming 2010 album, "Chamber Music Society," into a spotlight well beyond jazz's usual reach.

She likely attracted yet more fans when she sang a reverent version of "What a Wonderful World" during an "In Memoriam" segment at this year's Academy Awards.

The EMP roundtable was preceded by a screening of a short film that is available as a download; there's one to accompany each song on Ms. Spalding's new CD, "Radio Music Society" (Heads Up International). It's the sort of extra material usually reserved for pop stars. Yet even as Ms. Spalding's own star rises, she appears entirely committed to and comfortable in her roles as equal member and supporting player within small jazz ensembles.

At the Village Vanguard in January, eyes closed and hands in fluid motion along the fingerboard of her acoustic bass, Ms. Spalding bobbed her head side-to-side, the halo of her oversize Afro sometimes obscuring her fine features. This was challenging jazz, played in a collective trio with two standard-bearing female jazz musicians of the generation preceding hers—pianist Geri Allen and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. "You know the feeling of ice skating?" Ms. Spalding recounted in an interview a few days later. "It can feel so good, like forward motion with no resistance. You can turn and go anywhere, just glide. That's how I felt on that bandstand."

At 27, Ms. Spalding glides in several musical directions. During her Vanguard engagement, in and around interviews and photo shoots for her new CD, Ms. Spalding was in the studio recording with saxophonist Joe Lovano's Us Five, an innovative ensemble of which she has been a member since its start four years ago. "Before all the hype," said Mr. Lovano, who first directed her in student ensembles at Boston's Berklee School of Music, "you'd hear this young woman on bass, and she could just flat-out play. And she's not just playing a bass part, that's not what my band is about. She's playing ideas, developing ideas."

Beginning with her "Junjo," released at age 21 on the Spanish label Ayva, Ms. Spalding has emerged as a vocalist, bassist and songwriter firmly grounded in but also treading lightly on jazz tradition. She'd achieved some pop-culture notoriety before last year, including an appearance in Vogue magazine and a performance at the White House. Still, that Grammy was the game-changer. "But I'm still not sure yet what the Grammy means," Ms. Spalding said. "I see it as a tool. Will it serve my musical objective?" From the start, Ms. Spalding's objectives have appeared both wide-ranging and personal. Her 2008 Heads Up debut was, she said, "an appetizer sampler platter of who I am." "Chamber Music Society" was intended as "something intimate, where you ask the audience to lean into your space." Her new CD represents "my more extroverted side."

"Radio Music Society," on which Ms. Spalding plays primarily electric bass, is a crossover album, albeit from a musician who hasn't previously seemed bound-in. "Could we play the music in a way that doesn't water down what we do, and yet people who have no experience with jazz will relate to it?" she asked. Ms. Spalding thinks that jazz isn't a narrow idea for a niche audience. "It's just that people sometimes lack access to it."

Her new CD's opening track, "Radio Song," is meant to evoke "that moment when you discover a song on the radio, when it takes you away, saves the day." She hung on such moments while growing up in Portland, Ore., she said. Yet there's an irony surrounding the notion; music like hers lacks a radio home these days, and online listening habits often preclude serendipitous discovery. "There are some barriers through which a lot of good music can't pass," she said. "With this sheen of the Grammy, I figured maybe this would get through."

"I learned music as a communal effort," Ms. Spalding said. Her community for "Radio Music Society" includes Mr. Lovano and Ms. Carrington, on whose Grammy-winning "Mosaic" she sings and plays, as well as pianist Leo Genovese, a former Berklee classmate and longtime associate. It also includes two of Ms. Spalding's earliest mentors.

Pianist Janice Scroggins, among her earliest teachers and with whom she recently resumed studies, plays on one track. Trumpeter Thara Memory, in whose American Music Program Ms. Spalding first learned "the discipline that comes with loving to learn music," contributed horn arrangements; his students form the horn section on two tracks.

On the new CD, Ms. Spalding celebrates sophisticated musical structures that ride accessible grooves. She includes Wayne Shorter's "Endangered Species" (with her original lyrics) and Stevie Wonder's "I Can't Help It." Elsewhere, her compositions are complex yet pop-savvy. At their best, her lyrics open dialogues on deeper issues. "Land of the Free" is a brief hymnlike meditation on the exoneration of Cornelius Dupree Jr., a Texas man wrongly imprisoned for 30 years. "Vague Suspicions" considers the consequences of U.S. military actions in the Muslim world. Through her most tender and arresting vocal, she asks, "Am I part of war?"

Ms. Spalding's eyes widened when she spoke of a performance with pianist Herbie Hancock to celebrate the anniversary of Unesco, for which Mr. Hancock is now an ambassador. "I asked Herbie if I could compose something," she said.

"What she created was incredible," Mr. Hancock said recently over the phone. "It began like a child's clapping game and then expressed in mature words what this organization is all about." He hung up, and then called right back. "And did you see her on the Oscars? That nearly brought me to tears."

Ms. Spalding sees all these opportunities in the light of her earliest musical lessons. "As a child in Portland, I learned that music could be a nurturing, healing thing," she said. "I've never forgotten that."

http://online.wsj.com/art...45912.html

[img:$uid]http://i1212.photobucket.com/albums/cc443/afterlifeMe/esperanza_pr.jpg[/img:$uid]

smoothcriminal12 said:

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

Prince likes it & both admirations ultimately won her a grammy...

An opinion is an opinion.

If it's boring, winning a Grammy won't make it less boring.

MickyDolenz said:

I wonder why the article says she's covering Stevie, when he never put it out himself, and was first released by Michael Jackson. I think Susaye Green from The Supremes wrote the lyrics and Stevie did the music.

Maybe the writer has a Stevie boot and that's how he's familiar with the song. As Stevie's.

controversy99 said:

vizionheiry said:

@controversy99

What an excellent and thorough review. You cover the overall theme and each song. EACH SONG! It's so rare to read album reviews with that much depth in this age.

Also, yr thesis is fasicinating!

~~~~~

I have been sleeping on Ms. Esperanza. Every time I've seen her perform live on tv shows, it's a snooze fest. I referred to her as a whisper-singer. I also saw the vide of Black Gold but it bored me. The song and video are full of tropes, albeit inspirational.

I've listened to Radio Music Society (on Spotify ) and I love it. I love it so much I almost don't have any favorites. The tracks are equally worthy of my ear. The one that stands out is her interpretation of Wayne Shorter's Endangered Species with Lalah Hathaway.

[Edited 3/23/12 15:11pm]

Thanks for your kind words on the review. I try to provide some detail in my reviews, so that people get something out of it. Glad you enjoyed it.

I'm still boppin to Radio Music Society. It makes me want to check out more jazz singers--old & new. Sarah Vaughan, for example, is an amazing singer, and yet I only have a few of her songs on some jazz compilation album. What a shame. Hmm, I might need to expand my collection a bit.

I definitely need to expand my jazz beyond Miles. But I'm partial to male vocalists, so that where I probably should start but I just have to look.

SUPRMAN said:

controversy99 said:

Thanks for your kind words on the review. I try to provide some detail in my reviews, so that people get something out of it. Glad you enjoyed it.

I'm still boppin to Radio Music Society. It makes me want to check out more jazz singers--old & new. Sarah Vaughan, for example, is an amazing singer, and yet I only have a few of her songs on some jazz compilation album. What a shame. Hmm, I might need to expand my collection a bit.

I definitely need to expand my jazz beyond Miles. But I'm partial to male vocalists, so that where I probably should start but I just have to look.

You're the first person I've heard say this.

CynicKill said:

SUPRMAN said:

I definitely need to expand my jazz beyond Miles. But I'm partial to male vocalists, so that where I probably should start but I just have to look.

You're the first person I've heard say this.

Really? Most of my collection is male singers.

I realized after doing a playlist of all men for a daytrip with a friend that I have a definite preference for male singers.

For country and jazz, I'm sure my initial forays need to be male to hold my interest.

She is on Jay Leno tonight.

SUPRMAN said:

CynicKill said:

You're the first person I've heard say this.

Really? Most of my collection is male singers.

I realized after doing a playlist of all men for a daytrip with a friend that I have a definite preference for male singers.

For country and jazz, I'm sure my initial forays need to be male to hold my interest.

Maybe it's because women (to me) have always held the upper hand when it comes to Jazz vocalist. I mean they're almost a dime a dozen.

CynicKill said:

SUPRMAN said:

Really? Most of my collection is male singers.

I realized after doing a playlist of all men for a daytrip with a friend that I have a definite preference for male singers.

For country and jazz, I'm sure my initial forays need to be male to hold my interest.

Maybe it's because women (to me) have always held the upper hand when it comes to Jazz vocalist. I mean they're almost a dime a dozen.

Which may be why most of my jazz is instrumental. But come to think of it, you're right.

Interesting interview goes beyond the music:

[Edited 4/10/12 8:50am]