Author: Jernej Vene
Artist: Spalding, Esperanza
Label: HeadsUp International
Release: year_month
Length: 57:52
Rating: 4/5
American bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding is a fairly new name in the jazz world. Still, a closer look turns up quite a few interesting facts. Mentored by some of jazz’s giants, she has built a dazzling career since 2004, so it’s only right that we introduce her to Val 202 listeners too. Even though she works in traditional circles, her music uses the tenets of jazz to keep exploring and widening musical expression. The Top Albums show will feature music from her new record Radio Music Society. Esperanza Spalding comes from the US state of Oregon, and she works her mixed blood and heritage into her music to great effect. She was surely a child prodigy, since she taught herself violin and was playing it at the age of five. She played in a local classical orchestra for ten years and left it as a concertmaster. During a long childhood illness she kept honing her musical knowledge by studying at home. Thanks to her family background she’s fluent in English, Portuguese and Spanish, which she puts to good use in her music. As a teenager she started hanging around local jazz clubs and tried her hand at the bass guitar. Jazz is surely her first love, but playing jazz bass or double bass is of course something truly special. The musicians she played with helped her a lot too, and she gained priceless experience. Traditional schooling was always foreign to her, but with the help of friends and the encouragement of guitar legend Pat Metheny she went on to study at Berklee. It’s precisely because of the poor environment she comes from that Spalding values every success she achieves all the more. Jazz is a genre with no room for contrived technical vanity projects by people who want to be famous at any cost but don’t have an ounce of musical soul or style.
Esperanza Spalding has always written her own music, creating, and practicing bass and singing at a furious pace. The jazz greats who teach at Berklee helped her enormously, and she’s been going full throttle since 2004. Above all, Radio Music Society is a strikingly personal and emotional , yet also very candid record. Despite her youth, Spalding wins you over with a deeply lived-in approach. She’s an artist who doesn’t want to be pushy, and she hands out her authorship generously. The music on it is mostly her own, but on a few tracks Esperanza dipped into the musical treasury. She reworked songs by Stevie Wonder and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Her previous record was titled Chamber Music Society, and it reached more into her classical creative side. Spalding is versatile enough as a songwriter to create in both classical and jazz waters. So Radio Music Society takes her on an exploration of ideas left over from before, which she says are interesting enough for wider audiences too, not just for friends of jazz.
The fusion of jazz lines and pop melodies gives us choruses that are less demanding, several times very dreamy, and that reveal the devoted greatness of the young songwriter. Esperanza Spalding is surely a well-deserved winner of the Grammy for Best New Artist for 2010. The music flows, and Spalding has no trouble at all with harmonic richness. Her regular band backs her both in the studio and live, while on Radio Music Society she mostly invited singers as guests. Of course, we can’t skip past the excellent saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer Jack DeJohnette either, and in Endangered Species the excellent Lalah Hathaway sings.
Her music is exactly what the ear needs when it can’t handle a frontal assault of instant, quickly spoiled music. It’s just the right balance between building on jazz roots, heaps of heartfelt soul, and the odd instrumental tour de force, with refined vocal interpretation and masterful double bass or fretless electric bass soaring above it all. The end result is of course quite accessible, and as such a huge help in raising awareness, especially among younger ears. With Radio Music Society, Esperanza Spalding has become one of the brightest stars in modern jazz and singer-songwriter soul.
Lineup
Esperanza Spalding – vocals, bass, double bass
Jack DeJohnette, Billy Hart, Lyndon Rochelle – drums
Gilad Hekselman, Jef Lee Johnson, Ricardo Vogt – guitar
Raymond Angry, James Weidman – organ
Janice Scroggins – piano
Andrew Olson, Kyle Zimmerman – saxophone
Darren Barett, Kiran Bosley – trumpet
Lalah Hathaway, Leni Stern – backing vocals
Production
Esperanza Spalding, Q-Tip, Dave Love
Track list
1. Radio Song (6:32)
2. Cinnamon Tree (5:36)
3. Crowned & Kissed (4:35)
4. Land Of The Free (1:54)
5. Black Gold 5:17)
6. I Can’t Help It (4:42)
7. Hold On Me (4:30)
8. Vague Suspicions (5:51)
9. Endangered Species (6:38)
10. Let Her (4:21)
11. City Of Roses (4:35)
12. Smile Like That (4:18)
