Description
Esperanza Spalding’s eighth album is a strangely romantic effort to mold the often private experience of listening and feeling the healing power of music. It’s been 15 years since Esperanza Spalding’s auspicious debut Junjo. After that largely jazz-rooted recording, the bassist & multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter collaborated with Janelle Monáe, Bruno Mars, and Harry Belafonte while composing and releasing six more albums. Spalding’s projects have reflected her compulsive need to expand the range of her artistry beyond jazz, and each collaboration reveals an artist invested in both the heart and craft of music. The bones of her releases still lean on improvisation and sparkling tones. The combination of exuberance, refinement and some eccentricity is on display, and the musicians that surround her are outstanding. Esperanza Spalding is the kind of musician that really focuses on the act of creation and will just let her music go in the direction it naturally wants to go in, instead of sticking to some kind of formula. This album shared the name and spirit with a Harvard class she taught on songwriting and workshopping, so listening through this you get moments that come across as very direct song structure while other times being extremely abstract, but all the while it sounds genuine.
