Esperanza Spalding

The opening track of “Esperanza,” the album that moved among three languages, and the song that first reached a wide audience. It shows most vividly Spalding's signature gift of making bass and voice one body.

• On upright bass, Spalding lays down a bass line in a rhythm entirely unlike the vocal melody while singing at the same time. That hands and voice move independently without ever wavering is the song's first astonishment.
• Over a bouncy, soul-inflected groove, piano and drums offer light support. The texture is built so that the bass speaks up in every gap the accompaniment leaves open.
• Rather than belting, the voice flows light and clear. It sounds like a playful whisper to someone, saying, I know you know it's love.
• Between the lines, an improvised wordless singing (scat) slips in, spinning melody in syllables. It blurs the line between song and instrumental playing.

The moment the chamber-music experience of childhood came back as “Chamber Music Society.” Setting a poem by William Blake, the song lays a small life over human transience.

• It is built without drums, from strings, bass and voice alone. The texture of chamber music (室內樂), in which instruments listen to one another to weave a single grain, comes through intact.
• The bass is sometimes drawn long with the bow, sometimes plucked with the fingers. It blends in like a voice from the same family as the strings.
• The lyrics are a poem by the 18th-century English poet Blake. The song carries it in a quiet, composed manner, as if reciting the verse.
• Within a short, tidy form, the string arrangement swells and subsides with the singer's breath. It rewards following that breathing as you listen.

The signature track of “Radio Music Society,” the album meant to make songs that would pour out of the radio. A song that teaches African American children pride in their roots, it holds Spalding's long-held thoughts on community.

• A duet sung with the singer Algebra Blessett. Where the two voices trade lines and then overlap, the song's warmth deepens.
• Over a relaxed soul groove, a horn section sits brightly on top. It captures the album's character: a pop song shaped by the hands of jazz players.
• The lyrics speak the way an adult gently counsels a child. The plea not to forget history comes as encouragement, not reproach.
• Instead of flashy solos, the bass concentrates on holding the floor of the song firmly. It is playing that knows how to step back for the song.

The opening track of 「Emily's D+Evolution」, an album fronted by an alter ego named Emily. It sounds like a declaration of intent to shatter the jazz-prodigy image from within.

• Spalding picked up the electric bass in place of the upright. A heavy repeated phrase (riff), locked with distorted guitar, drives the song forward.
• The rhythm is straight-ahead, close to rock. Yet the beat breaks off and resumes in unexpected places, creating a strange tension.
• The voice is pushed out rougher and more forcefully than on the previous album. The delivery sounds like the same person playing an entirely different character.
• With Tony Visconti on board as co-producer, the sound was honed dense and sharp. Its texture is closer to a rock record than to a jazz album.

An album that dedicates one song to each part of the body, it was the first to pose in earnest the question of what a song does to the body. That question would lead, a few years later, to a laboratory in Portland.

• Each song is assigned a part of the body. The album is built so that, if you listen with that part in mind, the rhythm and the weight of the sound feel different.
• On release, one song was unveiled each day for twelve days, each with its own video. The approach invited listeners to savor the songs one by one rather than hear the album all at once.
• From song to song, the proportions of acoustic jazz, pop and chamber-music sound shift. Within a single record, the borders between genres keep moving.
• The singing repeats low, like an incantation, then suddenly soars. Most striking is a delivery that moves back and forth between speech and song.

The first track of 「Songwrights Apothecary Lab」, made after coming home, together with researchers and therapists. The idea of treating songs like prescriptions seeps all the way into the numbers in the titles.

• Instead of dazzling technique, a simple melody is calmly repeated. The structure seems meant to settle the listener's breathing.
• The instrumentation is sparse and the spaces between sounds are wide. Bass and voice move forward slowly, each waiting for the other.
• The singing feels less like a performance aimed at an audience than like words offered to one person sitting close by.
• Giving the songs numbers instead of names reveals that the work is not a finished product but an experiment in progress. Listen to the whole album in order and the arc becomes clear.

A bond with the Brazilian master Milton Nascimento, formed through a single song in 2010, became a full album 14 years later. It is a conversation across generations and languages, and a record of reverence.

• Nascimento's low, deep voice, now past eighty, sits beside Spalding's light, high one. The contrast between the two timbres is the heart of the album.
• Portuguese and English alternate from song to song, and sometimes within a single song. Even without knowing the meaning, the sound of the words becomes part of the melody.
• Over the gently swaying rhythms peculiar to Brazilian music, the bass quietly clears a path.
• Guest singers including Paul Simon appear on a few tracks. The effect is of a conversation between two people spreading into a wider gathering.