In the 1980’s and 1990’s, the Leslie Foster Community Echoes were singing all over San Antonio, all over Texas and across the country.
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Anthony Dean-Harris
Contributing Writer
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This past Friday, April 17th, may have been known throughout the Alamo City for a soggy “A Taste of New Orleans” and Oyster Bake, but it also brought about a spectacular show by the very talented Ms. Esperanza Spalding.
Spalding certainly put up no front about the person she was. She has a tendency to bring elegance and gravitas to her very casual, carefree nature. Early on in the first set, she kicked off her recently acquired vintage heels (of which she was certain to inform the audience of her purchase) and lost a hair clip. If anything, she was preparing the audience for an evening full of histrionics as she wailed on her acoustic and electric basses.
Her sidemen for the evening weren’t a pair of milquetoast performers, either. The multi-talented Argentina-born Leo Genovese backed Spalding on piano, Fender Rhodes, and other electronic keyboards. His solos were expansive yet crisp. He gave an air to the show that felt quite free that the trio could explore various directions but they also knew to keep things well timed and come back home without putting the audience through too much work to follow.
His exploration through electronic instruments had a major impact in many of the more fusion inspired songs, especially the evening’s encore, “Cinnamon Tree,” which will be released soon on Spalding’s upcoming album. The tune, a tribute to a friend of Spalding in New York enduring the daunting task of passing the bar exam, is reminiscent of the acid jazz group, Wax Poetic, where Norah Jones got her start. It’s a song like this with a new direction that just shows Spalding can head in any direction and show great skill with anything she endeavors.
The second set of the evening was most certainly more adventurous than the first set. The group’s journey into samba, free jazz, and stronger issues in her lyrics were certainly not for infantile minds, though musical exploration like this is Spalding’s raison d’être. She recently regaled to African-American Reflections, “Improvisation can be approached from so many different directions and applied to so many different sounds, genres, idioms…My duty is only to cultivate my musicianship to the best of my ability and focus on making the best music I can right now.”
Judging from the wide variety of music Spalding played through her two sets last Friday, she seems quite obstinate on playing the best music inspired from everything around her. The packed Jo Long Theater seemed to agree. Last Friday’s concert may possibly have been the largest attendance the Carver Community Cultural Center has seen in recent years.
Esperanza Spalding most certainly wowed San Antonio, creating an atmosphere of Fiesta in the midst of the season. It was almost like watching a shooting star across the sky.
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