REVIEW Spalding Shows Buffalo Why She Deserves a Grammy

Thursday December 09, 2010

From Buffalo News

Concert Review: Spalding shows Buffalo crowd why she deserves a Grammy
By: Jeff Miers

The coming Grammy Awards have a genuine chance to earn back some of the integrity that has been whittled away from the institution over the past 15 years or so.

If the Recording Academy sees fit to grant Esperanza Spalding the trophy in the slot it has nominated her for — Best New Artist — then, for the first time in a good while, musical justice will have been served by the Grammys. Spalding is a brilliant bassist, writer, singer, bandleader and arranger.

On Saturday, a warmly receptive (if decidedly mellow) crowd took in twin sets of Spalding and band’s genre-stretching music at Buffalo State College’s Rockwell Hall. All in attendance would likely agree that it would be a nice gesture toward the notion of “substance over style” if Spalding took home the Grammy over, say, fellow “Best New Artist” nominee Justin Bieber.

Though she is clearly playing jazz — the level of interplay and improvisation, and the density and imagination of both harmony and rhythm, make this plain — Spalding is up to something different. She is truly a fusion artist, if one drops the pejorative sense of that term and accepts its meaning as suggesting musical culture cross-pollination.

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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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