One year ago, bassist Esperanza Spalding introduced her album “Chamber Music Society” to Washington. Several months later, she received the 2011 Grammy Award for Best New Artist, topping teen idol Justin Bieber, among others. “The award has more to do with shining the spotlight on an artist so people pay attention,” she said. “The exposure gives popular awareness of my work. It also makes me carefully choose both the projects and the social causes I support.”
This week, Spalding returns to Washington for a very special evening at Warner Theatre to reprise “Chamber Music Society” with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and other crack musicians on the album, She will also give fans a peek into “Radio Music Society,” her upcoming album that revisits the pleasure of listening to the car radio.
| Onstage |
| Esperanza Spalding |
| Where: Warner Theatre, 13th St. NW |
| When: 8 p.m. Sunday |
| Info: $49.50 to $62.45; 202-783-4000; livenation.com |
“I’m very receptive to what other musicians bring to the table,” Spalding said. “The dynamics of music evolves out of enjoying their company, listening and sharing ideas. Terri Lyne and I worked together on the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz programs at the Kennedy Center and a number of other projects. She’s full of creative ideas and was inspired to get the musicians she wanted to be involved in my recordings and in her Mosaic Project that features over 20 women players.
“I’d already experimented with the numbers in ‘Chamber Music Society’ and wanted to stick to the way I was hearing music, so I decided to introduce it first. It’s a matter of preparedness, and ‘CMS’ was calling me.
“Like ‘Chamber Music Society,’ ‘Radio Music Society’ has been a fun project. I shared my ideas and everyone sunk their teeth into it. Instead of composing music to accompany poems that touch me, I went the other way and added my poem to pre-existing music. Wayne Shorter gave me permission to use his ‘Endangered Species.’ I hope the album does end up on radio heard by the jazz community.
“My Washington concert, like all of them, is organized according to what I want to include visually as a band and the sort of presentation that I imagine will put the music across. It’s hard to know which numbers will stay with the audience afterward because everybody is different. I do know that there is much to excite them.”
