Chamber Music Society

The 2011 Grammy for Best New Artist was the first time a jazz musician had won the category. Esperanza SpaldingEsperanza Spaldingエスペランサ・スポルディング, beating Justin Bieber and Drake. Chamber Music SocietyChamber Music SocietyEsperanza Spalding · 2010 (2010) moved across classical, jazz, and Brazilian music without genre anxiety — that fearlessness was her statement.

2010, before Esperanza SpaldingEsperanza Spaldingエスペランサ・スポルディング became widely known. 'Chamber Music SocietyChamber Music SocietyEsperanza Spalding · 2010' material — the very image of singing while holding the bass, the gesture that came to define her early career.

In this catalogue Terri Lyne Carrington mostly turns up in the small print — behind a piano trio on Work! (1986), inside someone else's concept on Gershwin's World (1998). Then Money Jungle: Provocative In Blue (2013) is hers, and it made her the first woman to win the Grammy for best jazz instrumental album.

Best New Artist is a pop category, and it usually goes to whoever stands at the front and sings. In 2011 it went to Esperanza Spalding, an upright bassist who sings while she plays, on the strength of Chamber Music Society (2010) — a record built around a string trio. She was the first jazz musician to win it.