PHOTOS BY: SANDRINE LEE
Last night when Bassist, singer and composer Esperanza Spalding won the GRAMMY® Award for Best New Artist Winners there was a buzz injected in the music scene that was felt all over the world. Spalding is the first jazz musician to ever win the Best New Artist GRAMMY® Award. She was nominated along with such dominant acts as Justin Bieber, Drake, Florence and the Machine, and Mumford and Sons. Her inclusion in this category signified her magnetic appeal to a broader audience. Not only is her music alluring, jazzy and amazing, she is a real person, playing real instruments, with real musicians. Her act puts a bit of validity back into the music world that has been lost in recent years to mainstream pop. If “esperanza” is the Spanish word for hope, then Esperanza Spalding could not have been given a more fitting name at birth.
Chamber Music Society, Spalding’s most recent release, is a brilliant marriage of string and jazz trio, and a showcase for her eclectic sensibilities along with her vocal and compositional talents. In January 2011, Chamber Music Society hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Albums chart.
Spalding combines the imaginative flights of a serious improviser with the musical accessibility of a pop star and within two years of her solo debut has beguiled success at nearly unimaginable heights. Esperanza, her 2008 release, spent over 70 weeks on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz chart and was the most successful internationally selling debut that year.
Other indie artists, such as Arcade Fire found success at the award show. The twitter forum has been lightning up with messages about the wins and losses but I think is best summed up by,
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RT @kanyewest: #ArcadeFire!!!!!!!!!! There is hope!!! I feel like we all won when something like this happens! FUCKING AWESOME!
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet
Can’t wait to listen to what will happen next!
