Esperanza Spalding Draws Young New Audience to Jazz

Saturday October 08, 2011

From The Chicago Tribune

Esperanza Spalding Draws Young New Audience to Jazz
By: Howard Reich

A very different kind of audience crowded into Symphony Center on Friday night.

Different, that is, from the listeners who typically attend jazz events in the grand old home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This time, Chicagoans who appeared to be in their 20s and 30s helped fill every inch of a sold-out auditorium, the young concertgoers dressed up for the occasion and representing an enormous segment of the audience.

This is precisely the crowd that jazz needs to cultivate for its second century: a hip, young contingent that goes out at night. The 26-year-old bassist-vocalist Esperanza Spalding may be precisely the musician to lure them.

No doubt many came because of Spalding’s new-found fame. In February, Spalding won the best new artist Grammy Award, to the despair of Justin Bieber fans everywhere. Yet judging by this audience’s reaction to Spalding’s luminous but sometimes challenging music, these listeners weren’t simply dropping in on the flavor of the month. Their enthusiastic ovations suggested they were responding to an ultra-sophisticated music that rarely enjoys this kind of attention in American popular culture.

The credit, of course, goes to Spalding, who has wrapped some thorny musical ideas in a gleaming, difficult-to-resist package. The very sight of a slender, willowy woman holding her upright bass up-close and moving constantly to the beat – her outsized Afro swaying all the while – instantly commands attention.

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Radio Song (clip)	1:01	Esperanza Spalding
Black Gold	5:17	Esperanza Spalding

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Watch what's on

*Radio Music Society Trailer
Esperanza Spalding at the Oscars
Black Gold
Esperanza Spalding at the Nobel Prize Ceremony

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