esperanza spalding

Grammy-winning bassist, singer, and bandleader esperanza spalding is an eaabibacliitoti* artist trained and initiated in the North American jazz lineage and tradition. Her work interweaves various combinations of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, restorative urban land and artist-sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie, and friend. She founded and serves as co-director of Prismid Sanctuary, a nonprofit that creates and stewards restorative artist residency and workshop space in Portland, Oregon. With her dance project Off Brand gOdds and the Songwrights Apothecary Lab, spalding leads multiweek performance, workshop, teaching, and therapeutic-arts research residencies. She received a Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award in 2024 and was a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow in 2016. * European-African ancestored being influenced by American cultures living in Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island