{"id":12402,"date":"2013-08-06T08:38:13","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T13:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.berkshirelinks.com\/?p=12402"},"modified":"2013-08-06T08:38:13","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T13:38:13","slug":"esperanza-spalding-at-tanglewood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/esperanza-spalding-at-tanglewood\/","title":{"rendered":"Esperanza Spalding at Tanglewood"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Esperanza Spalding at Tanglewood<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

August 4, 2013 performance; by Dave Read<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Esperanza<\/a>
Esperanza Spalding in performance at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood<\/strong> was transformed Sunday evening into Ms. Esperanza Spalding<\/a>‘s<\/strong> neighborhood; she is the phenom, who at age 4 made up her mind to have a life in music while watching Yo Yo Ma<\/strong> perform on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood<\/em>. A year later she had taught herself how to play violin; by 20, she was on the faculty of the Berklee College of Music<\/strong>; and in 2011 she won the Best New Artist Grammy<\/em>, the first time it was awarded to a jazz musician. <\/p>\n

Tonight, her neighborhood was the locale for a session of the Radio Music Society<\/em>, comprised of a crackerjack 11-piece band, which takes its name from her 2012 double-Grammy release. The horn section was set up behind music stands covered by a giant radio facade. Ms. Spalding made her entrance a few moments after the band had begun laying down the hypnotic beat of Radio Song<\/em>. A little later, she implored our indulgence while she got a few things off her mind, relating to “friends. family, loved ones…”. For most in the near-capacity audience, it was easy to assent to her wish, if not an outright privlege to attend to her artistry. <\/p>\n

Going back and forth between upright acoustic bass and electric bass guitar, Ms. Spalding occupied a musical space that could evoke a range of progenitors from Willie Dixon<\/strong>, to Jack Bruce<\/strong>, to Ron Carter<\/strong>. And her singing is just as impressive and various, if not peerless. For an encore, she cut loose with some terrific scat in duet with pianist Leo Genovese<\/strong>, promising us that it would be an improvement over the previous night’s effort at the Newport Jazz Festival<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Over the course of nearly 2 hours, we were treated to an abundance of jazz that was so contextualized that if you zoomed in to a small fragment, it was indistinguishable from mainstream jazz, but when you relaxed and took the long view, the music was the dominant fragment of a larger work, and any number of sub-genres could be identified, from hip hop, to blues, to opera.<\/p>\n

Yes indeed opera! A case could be made that opera is the most appropriate milieu for Esperanza Spalding. Besides her duly noted accomplishments as bassist, composer, and vocalist, she evinces a perfectly entertaining knack for story and drama – a sort of sturm und drang marked by a wink and a smile.<\/p>\n

Radio Music Society followed Ms. Spalding’s Chamber Music Society<\/em>, and after tonight’s performance, the last in the US, we’re left in eager anticipation of her next venture. Besides entertaining and delighting audiences, it’s probably a good bet also that she inspires young would-be musicians, because she exudes the same joy in performance as Yo Yo Ma<\/strong> does. How’s this for a coincidence? Mr. Ma was the featured soloist at this afternoon’s Boston Symphony Orchestra<\/strong> concert next-stage over in the Koussevitsky Music Shed<\/strong>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Esperanza Spalding at Tanglewood August 4, 2013 performance; by Dave Read Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood was transformed Sunday evening into Ms. Esperanza Spalding‘s neighborhood; she is the phenom, who at age 4 made up her mind to have a life in music while watching Yo Yo Ma perform on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. A year later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,18],"tags":[36,47],"class_list":["post-12402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jazz","category-tanglewood-3","tag-2013-tanglewood-reviews","tag-jazz","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}