REVIEW Esperanza Spalding Plays Her Hometown

Saturday February 26, 2011

From Oregon Live

Live Review: Esperanza Spalding at the Portland Jazz Festival
By: Jeff Baker

After a hectic day, Esperanza Spalding just wanted to take her shoes off, relax in a comfortable chair, and sip some wine while listening to soft chamber music — which she did, onstage at the Newmark Theater at the start of an unforgettable Portland Jazz Festival concert Friday night.

The curtain soon parted and Spalding moved to center stage and picked up her bass. The musicians shifted gears as Spalding sang the first notes of “Little Fly” and began plucking and strumming with authority. Everyone, audience and musicians, was locked in as the tiny young woman from North Portland carried them away.

“For I dance and drink and sing,” she sang, taking the lyrics from a poem by William Blake to a higher plane. “‘Til some blind hand shall brush my wing.”

It was obvious from the start that this wasn’t going to be a warm and fuzzy homecoming concert. There were no shout-outs to friends and family from Spalding, no stories about growing up here and how great it was to come home. Spalding has been doing plenty of that all week as ambassador for the jazz festival, and this wasn’t the time for casual banter. This was about art, performed at the highest level by someone with the vision, talent, and determination to make it happen. The music Spalding played, mostly from her “Chamber Music Society” album, is innovative and requires concentration and commitment to pull off. She was more than up to the challenge, which leads to the second obvious point:

That Grammy Award for best new artist was no fluke. It was a surprise, for sure, because jazz is rarely recognized outside its category and because Justin Bieber’s hair is world-famous, but make no mistake — Spalding is a star. She has charisma to burn and is confident at projecting it. Her stage presence is relaxed but there’s nothing casual about it. Her every move, scatting or whistling or tapping out a beat on the side of her bass or dancing a cha-cha with bare feet, is given over to the music and is part of tightly rehearsed concert. It’s impossible to look away.

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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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