A four-time Grammy Award-winner, humanitarian activist and educator, Esperanza Spalding has, in the past decade of her illustrious career, continually and brilliantly married genres, pushed boundaries and created groundbreaking work. By anyone’s measure, Spalding’s accomplishments at 32 years of age have already eclipsed those of artists half a century older, yet it’s blatantly obvious that her artistic journey is a lifelong one that we’ve just begun to collectively comprehend.
Spalding is, as a musician, composer, vocalist and lyricist, expansive, iterative, shape-shifting, open and progressively innovative. A voracious and magnetic performer, she is attentively studious towards what the process of playing live—whether sharing a stage with her own revolving ensembles, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Janelle Monae or Prince—presents to the structure of a song.
12 Little Spells finds Esperanza Spalding conjuring in the medium of musical creation, through an exploration of the body, human energy and healing. Working alongside Esperanza on this project are visual artist Carmen Daneshmandi, opera/theater director Elkhanah Pulitzer, wardrobe specialist Diego Montoya, and video artist Ethan Samuel Young. Each collaborator is creating key elements of 12 Little Spells without hearing any music, having only the project title and spell names as inspiration.
This 16-track release features the full 12 Little Spells album plus 4 additional songs/spells.
