Article Contributed by Michael J. Media Group
Published on 2026-07-19
photo credit: Holly Andres
Five-time Grammy Award-winning bassist, vocalist and composer esperanza spalding will perform at the Vilar Performing Arts Center in Beaver Creek, Colorado, on Thursday, September 17. The all-ages concert begins at 7 p.m.
The performance will close the Vilar Performing Arts Center’s 2026 Summer Jazz Series, which brings a diverse lineup of jazz, soul and blues artists to the heart of Beaver Creek Village.
Born in 1984 in Portland, Oregon, esperanza spalding, also known as irma nejando, is an eaabibacliitoti* artist trained and initiated in the North American masculine jazz lineage and tradition.
Her work interweaves various combinations of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, regenerative agriculture, urban land and artist-sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie and friend, while collaboratively decolonizing within and through her hometown community.
She co-founded and serves as lead curator for Prismid Inc., a nonprofit organization that creates and stewards artist residency, performance and workshop space in Portland.
spalding continues to collaborate and perform in new productions of …(Iphigenia), an opera written by Wayne Shorter for which she wrote the libretto and co-produced its 2021 and 2022 premieres.
She is also developing a mockumentary in collaboration with brontë velez and the San Francisco Symphony, researching and developing liberation rituals in jazz and Black dance, and continuing a lifelong collaboration with practitioners in fields related to sound, healing and cognition through the Songwrights Apothecary Lab. The project develops music with enhanced therapeutic potential.
With her dance company Off Brand gOdds, co-founded with Antonio Brown, and the Songwrights Apothecary Lab, she leads multi-week performance, teaching, workshop and therapeutic-arts research residencies in collaboration with colleges and arts venues across the Americas and around the world.
Her forthcoming installation, I Love Being Black/Quit Saying I’m Black, opens in a near future, commissioned and produced by institutions that undertake the work of learning about, reaching out to and offering comprehensive support to eaabibacliitoti and other ancestored artists.
*European-African ancestored being influenced by American cultures living in Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island.
esperanza spalding
Thursday, September 17, 2026
7 p.m.
Vilar Performing Arts Center
Beaver Creek, Colorado
All ages
Tickets: $73-$124
Tickets:
Purchase tickets
Stream Milton + esperanza:
Listen here
More information:
esperanzaspalding.com
