Attending a concert usually is accompanied by familiarity with the performing artist, as well as familiarity with the works they are currently presenting on their tour. For the Seattle stop on bassist /composer Esperanza Spalding’s current tour, familiarity seemed to be a factor replaced by mystery.
In conversations around the grand lobby of Benaroya Hall, the city’s symphony hall, jazz fans and symphony lovers alike seemed to be perplexed with what was to arrive on stage over the next few hours.
Spalding’s collaboration with the four-member Antonio Brown Dance ensemble was originally to entail a sparse format, with two musicians and two dancers on stage as they performed selections from the artist’s recording history. What it received was mostly a four-on-four match between musicians and dancers, and a collage of the myriad of activities and artistic notions that occupy the mind and actions of one of the most interesting and intriguing jazz artists of the twenty-first century.
What most of the aforementioned lobby conversationalists lacked was a query into the past ten years of Spalding’s wonderfully diverse and life-affirming career. While many were expecting a jazz format much like her recent pass through Seattle’s Moore Theatre with Joe Lovano, Jack DeJohnette and Leo Genovese, or an orchestral work inspired by her time with jazz giant Wayne Shorter, Spalding was more intent on showing us just what she was doing these days within the whirlwind of music, philosophy, activism and spiritual exploration that represents her life as a whole.
The stage at Benaroya was scattered with musical instruments in an arc encompassing an open section that would facilitate dancers. The lighting initially was very dark, but soon became connected in different intensities and color formations with the light and shadow of physical movement caressed by the abstract musical figures the band employed. 
© Lisa Hagen Glynn
The visuals combined with the music created a whole that was stunning. It gave context to the music that is difficult to decipher with Spalding’s recordings, particularly Songwrights Apothecary Lab (Concord, 2021) and 12 Little Spells (Concord, 2018). To stroll through the performance tune by tune would indeed be pointless, it would cut into tiny pieces that which were presented as a constant, as a whole.
Yet five minutes in, the audience was met with familiarity as Spalding performed Shorter’s classic “Ponta de Areia,” in Portuguese, a tune she will be found performing on a soon to be released album with Brazilian legend Milton Nascimento, the original vocalist on Shorter’s classic take.
This is not to say that Spalding’s presentation was a seamless triumph in live concert performance. While most of the pieces spoke to different parts of the human anatomy, most didn’t resonate as much as “Thang,” which featured choral vocals, Hammond B-3 organ and a definite groove that prompted Spalding to exclaim, “I want to talk to your spine.” It did pull the audience into her world of physical and social healing and allow them to let go of any notions of formality.
The tune included the full band with four dancers moving towards center stage as backup singers would in a Detroit soul band, tightly choreographed but passively vocal in nature. The four dancers performed in a tight, close formation that evolved into a strut with Spalding joining in playfully. It was the most memorable moment of the performance in terms of melody, movement and harmony working together as a force.
Guitarist Matt Stevens remained anchored to his instrument throughout the nearly two-hour performance, though offering very little in terms of what one may have come to expect from one of the most eclectic jazz guitar soloists of his generation. His playing offered nuance, color, groove and an overall presence that in retrospect was like a life current for the overall sound of the band. Morgan Guerin a noted jazz tenor saxophonist moved from his main instrument to organ, electric piano, electric bass and guitar as the show evolved.
Drummer Eric Doob could be loud and brash on drum kit, or subtly gentle on the same and a variety of hand percussion instruments. While the dancers mostly offered graceful and musically integrated motion art at the highest level, they too acted as a vocal foil for Spalding’s abstract melodies and seismic vocal reaches. Brown’s athleticism alone was a catalyst for the foursome’s eclecticism. Safa Ishmel-Muhammad offered striking movement along with an acute vocal prowess that placed her in the center of much of the interaction between Spalding and the dancers.
Christiana Hunte and Kaylin Horgan flashed within dynamic lighting, opening up the plane of collective movement for interpretation and jazz-like in the moment engagement. It put to rest any notion within the group mind of the audience that this collaboration between Spalding and Brown was some sort of quickly assembled addition to a musical performance. Brown’s choreography, and the performance of the quartet of dancers was integral, essentially making this stage set an octet of artful expression.
The performance included very little dialog from the artist concerning song titles, or current recordings normally associated with modern touring. It was four musicians eschewing soloing for the most part, in a performing harmonization with Brown’s stunning choreography. Doob seemed to be the connector between the band and the intricate choreography between dancers and lights. 
© Lisa Hagen Glynn
He was surely the most aggressive and animated instrumental presence for the evening, with Stevens, Guerin and Spalding largely running in support mode. The poetic dialog and rhythmic brilliance of the choreography was the expressive, in-the-moment interest of the performance, as opposed to a focus on the musical improvisators of most performances in jazz.
In speaking to “mind,” Spalding introduced a tune that was “specifically dedicated to people who dedicate more time to their phone.” Within the lyrics she asked us, “Have you prayed to your phone today” and “Have you googled humanity?” She warned us in that context to “guard the animal in you.” She speaks of shopping for “wisdom at her very fingertips,” on her devices. “Dancing the Animal” is a guide to understanding that our being essentially exceeds human intellect and is deeply engaged in the instinctive and intrinsic aspects of our humanity. There is a dance between the two that we somehow must navigate on a daily basis.
Spalding’s narrative is relentless, almost exhausting at times as she creates layers and layers of context as the performance takes shape and comes to a climax. It is akin to driving through a stunning landscape at breakneck speed, not deciphering the images specifically, but upon stopping having the blurred vision experienced slowly come into focus. The artist’s inspiration is like one organism that includes music, philosophy, science, psychology and the spirituality that is the culmination of it all. While Spalding’s bass prowess is a known factor, and her vocal skills an evolving phenomena that continues to graduate to new levels of excellence, her composed melodies are not memorable when standing on their own. 
© Lisa Hagen Glynn
The harmony written around them is solid, yet unremarkable. As jazz fans, the public has seen and heard her virtuosity over two decades, time and time again. She was a catalyst for Shorter to complete his fifty-year ambition to compose an opera, resulting in her writing the libretto for “Iphigenia.” She performed in the production as well. But her art as a whole has been ascending in meteoric fashion along with her new found popularity. To describe the past six or seven years of her career would be similar in describing this one, individual performance in Seattle—unafraid, positive, hopeful and transcendent in its absolute uniqueness.
There were some challenges with the concert hall itself, with the audience at times straining to understand the dialog. Spalding’s public speaking skills are not typical mind you, she speaks quickly and succinctly without interruption at times. Benaroya Hall is an acoustical wonder, one of the country’s, or for that matter the world’s great symphony halls. During a violin sonata for example, the unamplified instruments resonate clearly and voluminously in every square inch of the building.
Sound engineers have always had a difficult time amplifying music under such conditions, not just in Seattle, but at symphony halls worldwide that by nature are very “hot” rooms. Yet one could easily look back to 2015, when Spalding’s mentor Shorter played Benaroya with the benefit of nearly perfect sound engineering. Less is more in this case, and the master Shorter left no doubt that jazz performance in the room can be achieved at the highest level. Samara Joy’s recent concert had its challenging moments, but was well engineered. The music itself sounded beautiful, but Spalding’s dialog was intermittently indiscernible in important moments, especially unnerving for those in the audience unfamiliar with Spalding’s recent work.
Just before the concert finale, the house darkened and a video appeared on screen at the rear of the stage, informing the audience of Spalding’s Portland area project, Prismid Sanctuary. On a ¾ acre plot in urban Portland, the sanctuary looks to provide a place to convene, rest and heal for Indigenous, Black and all POC artists and cultural workers. It is one more aspect of Spalding’s art that is completely in union with her life and ambitions to provide hope and healing to the world around her.
It is that spirit about her that will always leave the jazz community open to the ever evolving reach of her artistry and humanity. She did not introduce the video as she later acknowledged she should have, leaving the audience a bit perplexed, and unexpecting of one more tune to be played. Those who are familiar with the artist got a chuckle out of this—Spalding gets into so many things so deeply at once that some fragments of formality may be lost in the shuffle.
© Lisa Hagen Glynn
There is no doubt that many Spalding fans in the audience will have fonder memories of seeing her alongside Shorter, with Genovese and Terri Lyne Carrington or her recent duo pairing with pianist Fred Hersch. In the lobby chatter heard after the performance, many were expecting more traditional jazz trappings.
Yet one cannot help thinking of how Shorter would react, knowing his penchant for interacting in music and life with strong women. One would have to think he would be proud, inspired and eager to interact with her understanding of art as an integral part of spirituality and social healing among the many other aspects of her human interests. It is all one organism.
