Esperanza Spalding’s ‘Past, Present, Future’ Tour Arrives at Warner Theatre in DC January 26, 2025
By: Eunice Moseley
“A pool of songs I draw from,” said five-time Grammy winning Jazz bassist Esperanza
Spalding (Irma Nejando) to me when asked about the songs to be performed at her concert
slated for Sunday January 26, 2025 at the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC (8pmEST). “It’s
what I love and what people love. That’s why I call it the ‘Past, Present and Future Tour’.
Future…is a window into what I am into now. That’s where the dance piece comes from.”
Her concert will have two dancers performing. Esperanza, a Concord Records OMK artist with
eight albums to her credit, goes on to explain her “research” into why people do not dance
anymore to Jazz music started her showcasing dancers during her performances. She explained
that in the past people danced to such Jazz forms as Swing, but not with the Jazz played today.
“Its weird people don’t dance to Jazz…that bothered me,” the Oregon native stressed about when
discussing how the dance portion of her show was added. “I started researching history…the
Swing era, Juke-Joint… I started talking to my elders about when people stop dancing to Jazz.”
The reply from the elders was that white people didn’t want black people to have that kind of
freedom. Thereby, systematically changing the style of Jazz.
“I said I have to learn how to play (Jazz) to integrate dance,” said the Boston Music Award
winner. “To create a space to encourage movement. We all have dance in our DNA.”
I asked Esperanza Spalding, also a two-time Grammy nominated artist, about her dance
organization Off Brand, co-founded with Antonio Brown, and she said, “I treat it like a lab.”
So, get ready to dance to Jazz when visiting the “Past, Present and Future” Tour of Esperanza
Spalding. Spalding started out as a prodigy violin player before moving to the stand-up bass. At
the tender age of five Esperanza was a violinist playing for the Chamber Music Society of
Oregon. She went to a high school of the arts where she was introduced to the stand-up bass.
During her tour Esperanza will be performing songs from her past, present and a look into her
music coming-up in the future. She debuted in 2006 on a Spanish record label. In 2008 she
released a project on an American record label. In 2010 she released her third album “Chamber
Music Society” which reached #34 on Billboard Chart and garnered her first Grammy Award. As
they say, the rest is history.
“I started (playing bass) because I was walking past a class with an open door and it was there,”
she said when I asked. She went on to play the stand-up bass strings and fell in love with the bass string sound. “I picked up playing that instrument,” she concluded.
At 20 she was asked to teach a summer program, a basic music class, when she was straight out
of college (Berklee). She went on to teach a film scoring program and from that she started
teaching the practice of music at Harvard. Esperanza has also garnered two honorary doctorates
from Berklee and Cal Institution of the Arts. The composer is a self-taught stand-up bass and
guitar player. “I did a Jazz line,” she explained about her early teaching experience as we came to the end of our interview. “The students were so welcomed (to Jazz). It’s a different culture from Classical
music (what she was playing before Jazz).”
Don’t miss the Esperanza Spalding’s ‘Past, Present, Future” Tour Sunday January 26, 2025 at
the Warner Theatre at 8pmEST and be prepared to dance.