esperanza spalding (right) with Corey King, who is featured on the performances of spalding’s three latest “Formwela” compositions (courtesy of Play MPE)
Most readers, particularly those following performances presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), probably know by now that, when it was announced in December of 2018 that Esa-Pekka Salonen would succeed Michael Tilson Thomas as SFS Music Director, one of the first things Salonen did was to announce his collaboration with eight partners from a variety of different cultural disciplines. One of the partners he selected was bassist and vocalist esperanza spalding, whose approaches to jazz out on the “bleeding edge” were as stimulating they were unique. My own “first contact” with spalding took place in June of 2020, when she released an EP of five songs that she performed with pianist Fred Hersch at the Village Vanguard in October of 2018. Her first “official” affiliation with SFS took place the following month when KQED broadcast Throughline: San Francisco Symphony—From Hall to Home. Not only did this program provide the first opportunity to see Salonen in his new role as Music Director; but also the video showcased all of the Collaborative Partners, including a solo performance by spalding.
At the beginning of this month, I first learned about a series of spalding compositions entitled “Formwela.” The first three of these pieces were first performed when spalding launched the Songwrights Apothecary Lab this past April. The “laboratory” provided a venue for collaboration among musicians, researchers, and practitioners in a variety of disciplines. The goal was to explore “how songwriters may meaningfully incorporate therapeutic practices and knowledge into their process and production.” Shortly after the performance, the three compositions were collected on a single Amazon Music listening page. In addition, separate MP3 download Web pages were created for “formwela 1,” “formwela 2,” and “formwela 3.”
During the month of June, three more “Formwela” works were created (along with a shift in capitalization). All three of these have been collected for both listening and viewing on a single Web page on the Web site for the Songwrights Apothecary Lab. Clicking on the plus sign pulls down a set of program notes for each composition. Clicking on the “album cover” launches a YouTube video of the performance of the piece.
I must confess that I tend to be more than a little skeptical when “therapeutic practices and knowledge” are invoked in acts of making music. However, all of these “Formwela” pieces are short, the longest (the third) lasting only a little over seven minutes. Each individual composition strikes me as a musical haiku, which triggers my own personal sense-making processes. Mind you, I can say the same of just about any other experience of listening to music; but spalding’s approach to distillation seems to trigger the deployment of a unique set of cognitive processes.
In all fairness I should observe that all of these pieces are a far cry from any of the five tracks on her album with Hersch. For one thing diction has much higher priority, and her scat singing on “Dream of Monk” is downright jaw-dropping. (When I wrote about this album, the only comparison that seemed appropriate was that of the paraphrases composed by Franz Liszt!) Also, all of the tracks on this EP were longer than any of the “Formwela” compositions. spalding’s priorities have clearly shifted to a new mindset; and, between my general love for straight-ahead jazz and bebop and my enthusiasm every time Hersch releases a new album, my own cognitive process will still need some time to adjust to how much spalding’s work has changed since 2018.
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