Esperanza Spalding Quartet

(US)
Modern and mainstream jazz

An excellent acoustic bassist, fine jazz singer with scat tendencies and a composer, who despite her young age, has played a variety of different styles. In her own projects, she favours jazz and plays

bass currently in Joe Lovano’s quartet, Kenwood Denard’s Real Thing and the Ray Charles Big Band.

Born 1984 on the US West Coast, in Portland, Oregon, Esperanza Spalding picked up the bass at 14 and honed her developing skills in the jazz and blues clubs of her hometown. She was a bass-playing singer

in Pretend For Noise, an indie rock band that mixed jazz with pop and made two albums on Hush. She then moved on to hip-hop with Black Science Tribe. After moving to the East Coast to study at the Berklee

College of Music (where she is now the youngest faculty member ever), she has worked with violinist Regina Carter, guitarist Pat Metheny and pianist Michael Camino, among others.