
*“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, 202,5 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.
“It’s weird people don’t dance to Jazz…that bothered me,” the Oregon native stressed 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, and 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 the 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 on Sunday, January 26, 2025, at the Warner Theatre at 8pmEST, and be prepared to dance. www.EsperanzaSpalding.com
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Dr. Eunice Moseley has an estimated weekly readership of over one million with The Pulse of Entertainment. She is also a Business Management/Public Relations Strategist and Consultant at Freelance Associates and is Promotions Director (at-large) for The Baltimore Times. www.ThePulseofEntertainment.com. EVENTS: “Uplifting Minds II” Entertainment Conference (ULMII), founded by Eunice in 1999, is into its 26th year. Next events are coming to Baltimore via Zoom Saturday April 19, 2025, presented by Security Square Mall and The Baltimore Times, and Los Angeles via Zoom Saturday, November 8, 2025. The ULMII event is a free entertainment conference offering a Professional Panel Q&A Session, a Professional Talent Showcase and National Talent Competition (vocal, songwriting, dance and acting) where aspiring artists have a chance to receive over $20,000 valued in prizes/product/services. Log onto www.UpliftingMinds2.com RSVP for Zoom Access at EventBrite.com or email [email protected].
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