Esperanza Spalding at Memorial Hall

esperanza spalding is an eaabibacliitoti* artist, trained and initiated in the North American jazz lineage and tradition. Her work interweaves various combinations of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, restorative urban land & artist-sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie, friend.

She founded and serves as co-director of Prismid Sanctuary, a non-profit that creates and stewards restorative artist residency & workshop space in Portland, Oregon (Prismid.org)....

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esperanza spalding is an eaabibacliitoti* artist, trained and initiated in the North American jazz lineage and tradition. Her work interweaves various combinations of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, restorative urban land & artist-sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie, friend.

She founded and serves as co-director of Prismid Sanctuary, a non-profit that creates and stewards restorative artist residency & workshop space in Portland, Oregon (Prismid.org).


With her dance project “Off Brand gOdds” and the Songwrights Apothecary Lab she leads multi-week performances, workshops, teaching, and therapeutic-arts research residencies. She is a 2024 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award and a 2016 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” Fellow.


*European-African ancestored being influenced by American cultures living in Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island

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