Esperanza Spalding

Chamber Music Society

Esperanza Spalding · 2010

Radio Music Society

Esperanza Spalding · 2012

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.

— Grammy Awards 2011, 2011

Chamber Music Society

Esperanza Spalding · 2010

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.

— NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, 2010

Esperanza SpaldingEsperanza Spaldingエスペランサ・スポルディング conceived 12 Little Spells as a twelve-song cycle keyed to body parts: "Thang" for the thoracic spine, "You Have to Dance" for the thighs, and so on. In her NPR interview she described wanting to treat the act of composition itself as a healing gesture.

— Esperanza Spalding: 12 Little Spells, NPR Music, 2018

Adopting an alter ego built around her middle name, Emily, gave Esperanza SpaldingEsperanza Spaldingエスペランサ・スポルディング a theatrical frame for stepping outside her own career. In her NPR conversation she described Emily as a device for letting "the child me ask questions of the adult me."

— Esperanza Spalding: 12 Little Spells, NPR Music, 2018

For Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, Shabaka HutchingsShabaka Hutchingsシャバカ・ハッチングス enlisted Andre 3000, Floating Points, Esperanza SpaldingEsperanza Spaldingエスペランサ・スポルディング, and Moses Sumney. As The Wire reported, sessions began as short solo improvisations and the songs' outlines emerged afterward through editing with Carlos Nino.

— Shabaka Hutchings: Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, The Wire, 2024

Chamber Music Society

Esperanza Spalding · 2010

Emily's D+Evolution

Esperanza Spalding · 2016

Exposure

Esperanza Spalding · 2017

Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace

Shabaka Hutchings · 2024

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.