Esperanza Spalding

About

Also known as: Esparanza Spaulding, Esperanza Emily Spalding, Irma Nejando

Esperanza Spalding plays bass like a composer thinks, always in service of something larger, which is probably why her music refuses to sit still in one genre. She made history as the first jazz musician to win the Grammy for Best New Artist, back in 2011, beating out some very high profile competition. Her 2010 album Chamber Music Society charted at number 34 on the Billboard 200, a rare feat for a jazz record, and Radio Music Society followed it up with two more Grammys. Her 2019 release 12 Little Spells hit number one on Billboard's Top Jazz Albums and earned her yet another Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Spalding sings in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and her sound pulls from jazz, soul, funk rock, and Brazilian music, sometimes all at once. The concept album Emily's D+Evolution, co produced by Tony Visconti, showed off a harder, stranger side of her artistry. She has also taught at Berklee College of Music and held a professorship at Harvard University, though she stepped away from that role in 2022.