[rating=4.00]
To arrange sound into melodies and effectively translate ideas a musician strives to create cohesive layers that can be intertwined and woven together to produce expression. At the purest levels of music, the synergy of the layers acts as an assembly and centuries ago chamber music gave way for these ideas to be brought forth. In her newest album titled Chamber Music Society, jazz bassist, singer and composer Esperanza Spalding revives that concept by exploring the limits of jazz and classical arrangements in fusing them with many forms of worldly music and tranquil vocals.
Opening the record is a song titled “Little Fly” that weaves an orchestrated arrangement with Ms. Spalding’s beautiful voice singing the words to a poem written by English poet William Blake. While listening to the piece, the cello and violin take you on a path of flight and the stripped down instrumentals exemplify the purity of the classical jazz coexistence. On “The Knowledge of Good and Evil” Ms. Spalding’s entry quickly transitions from staccato scatting to a burst of vocal variety which shows her versatility and swells as the string section accompanies her. Her use of the human voice, without singing any actual words, shows her train of thought through the phrasing that depicts much more than could ever be said or transcribed.
Chamber Music Society, co-produced by Ms. Spalding and Gil Goldstein, embodies a sense of wholeness as the tracks have a flowing connective nature to them. Deviating from a standard rhythm, Ms. Spalding twines multiple time signatures together on “Really Very Small” which features her free floating vocals and a reoccurring bass line complemented with a tangential piano riff.
As you listen to “Wild Is the Wind” you can tell from the opening notes that something is looming around the corner during the arrangement. This haunting track will rest beneath your skin long after hearing Ms. Spalding’s shrill at the climax of the piece; one will know when they reach that point. At times it is like the instrumentals and her voice are equally pulling on you, almost as if being torn by the music. Slowly opening with a trickling piano melody and mellow bass part, Ms. Spalding enters on “What a Friend” gliding on top of the orchestration with her voice. As the tempo picks up, her circling vocals establish excitement almost as if skipping down a street to keep up with a friend.
Just 25 years old, Ms. Spalding has already attained professorship at the Berklee College of Music, had the honor of performing at President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony and Concert in 2009 and has gained the admiration of the likes of Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny and Gary Burton among many others. “The most beautiful things emerge from chaos,” Ms. Spalding says of musical ideas and creativity, and throughout that process a transcendent and musically diverse artist has stepped into the light with her newest ideas.
