Bassist

Singer

This tribute concert honors the life and legacy of the great jazz innovator, composer, bandleader, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter who passed away in March 2023. These performances feature five longtime Shorter collaborators in their BSO debuts, including the Grammy Award-winning bassist and vocalist esperanza spalding. spalding wrote the libretto for Shorter’s 2022 opera …(Iphigenia), which was premiered in Boston in 2021 and is based on the ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides.

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Celebrating the Symphonic Legacy of Wayne Shorter

Boston Symphony Hall

There has been no looking back for esperanza spalding. After winning the 2011 Grammy® Award for Best New Artist, the bassist and singer has gone on to win four more Grammys®, including Best Jazz Vocal in 2020, and to wow audiences all over the world. Is esperanza spalding the hottest musician in jazz today? Come find out for yourself in this kickoff to our Jazz Series!

An Evening with Esperanza Spalding

Shermerhorn Symphony Center

Felipe Lara’s Double Concerto, written specifically for flutist Claire Chase and jazz bassist and singer esperanza spalding, employs a vast array of effects from both soloists. In Petrushka Stravinsky created an exciting new world of sound — shifting rhythms and keys, and echoes of a barrel organ — to tell the story of a puppet love triangle set at a Shrovetide Fair. Susanna Mälkki conducts.

Mälkki Conducts Stravinsky and Lara

Lincoln Center

Susanna Mälkki leads the LA Phil in the joyous polkas and melancholy dumkas of Dvořák’s spirited Slavonic Dances. Written while the composer was relatively unknown, Dvořák’s spirited transformation of Czech and Bohemian folk dances rhythms launched his career. Famously obsessed with railroads—even saying once he would trade all his symphonies for having invented the locomotive—the Slavonic Dances invites listeners to imagine a train journey through Eastern Europe, taking in the many dance melodies heard at weddings and celebrations.

Mälkki Leads Dvořák

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Under the leadership of Gustavo Dudamel and María Valverde, the Dudamel Foundation and the LA Phil will co-present their first Encuentros in the United States in July and August 2022.
Encuentros explores cultural unity and celebrates harmony, equality, dignity, beauty, and respect through music, with the goal of inspiring and teaching a new generation of young leaders to work toward building a better world. The Dudamel Foundation and LA Phil are inviting 90 young musicians (ages 18–26) from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa—top tier players from a host of international El Sistema-inspired programs—to work together with students from the United States, side-by-side in the Encuentros Orchestra.
During the two-week intensive global leadership and orchestral training program, workshops and concerts will be conducted by Dudamel with additional sectionals and master classes led by a faculty of musicians from the LA Phil and guest instructors from other top international orchestras. The young musicians will also participate in community initiatives, mentorship opportunities with the YOLA National Festival, and projects throughout Los Angeles, culminating with concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and in Santa Barbara and Berkeley.
For this very special concert, multi-Grammy-winning vocalist, bassist, and composer esperanza spalding—who recently took home a 2022 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album—joins conductor and orchestra under the stars at UC Berkeley’s magnificent William Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre.

Gustavo Dudamel conducts Encuentros Orchestra

University of California, Berkeley

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 Greek myth and opera are re-imagined through a classical and jazz-infused score and deeply poetic libretto. Two of the most visionary and daring musical voices of our time embark on a staged intervention into myth-making. spalding leads a company of nineteen vocalists and chamber orchestra, with Shorter's venerated jazz trio at its center.

(Iphigenia)

The Broad Stage

A living legend of jazz collaborates with one of the brightest lights of the younger generation in the West Coast premiere of a Cal Performances co-commission that reimagines what opera can be, and asks us to reexamine the stories we have inherited and the choices we make as a society.Wayne Shorter, 11-time Grammy-winning composer and saxophonist, has written the music, and esperanza spalding, 2022 Grammy nominee for Best Jazz Vocal Album, four-time Grammy-winning bassist, composer, and vocalist, is the librettist and plays the title role in Iphigenia, a radical new take on Euripides’ ancient Greek play Iphigenia in Aulis. Classical and jazz forms collide in an expansive score that features Shorter’s groundbreaking method of symphonic improvisation, lifting up Spalding’s artfully poetic and fractured libretto.The fully staged work is performed by a 28-piece chamber ensemble; the rhythm section of Shorter’s venerated quartet (Shorter himself does not perform); a cast of nine vocalists; and a chorus of 10 singers; with set design by icon Frank Gehry and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. As spalding explains, “Our Iphigenia has at its core a sense of autonomy—in this adventure of life, you have freedom of choice. The overarching sentiment is one of humanistic love, of wanting to re-awaken the dreams of youth free of the pressures of adulthood.”

Jazz: WAYNE SHORTER & ESPERANZA SPALDING’S …(Iphigenia)

Herbie Hancock is one of the most revered and innovative musicians in jazz history. His restless reinventive spirit has found him exploring African music, funk, classical, electronic music, hip-hop, and more. Whether he’s teaming up with the LA Phil or dialing in outer-space sounds on his keytar, Herbie is always on the move. He returns to the Hollywood Bowl stage for a night of freewheeling and thought-provoking jazz.

Esperanza Spalding

Bassist, Singer

Events

21 - 23 Mar, 2024

Celebrating the Symphonic Legacy of Wayne Shorter · Boston Symphony Orchestra

Sep 26, 2023

An Evening with Esperanza Spalding · Nashville Symphony

29 - 31 Mar, 2023

Mälkki Conducts Stravinsky and Lara · New York Philharmonic

23 - 25 Mar, 2023

Mälkki Leads Dvořák · Los Angeles Philharmonic

Aug 4, 2022

Gustavo Dudamel conducts Encuentros Orchestra · Cal Performances

About

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