June 17, 2025 7:30 pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
MYS’ 50th Anniversary Season finale features five-time GRAMMY winner, Portland native, and barrier breaker esperanza spalding in performance with MYS’ Symphony Orchestra and Jazz All-Stars.
Repertoire includes:
MYS-commissioned piece by esperanza spalding exploring the connection between the land and spirit, orchestrated in partnership with Puerto Rican Jazz musician and composer Edmar Colón.
Ebony and Ivy by esperanza spalding
Midnight in Carlotta’s Hair by the great Wayne Shorter
Dances in the Canebrakes by Florence Price
Drums: A Symphonic Poem by James P. Johnson
Satchmo! (A Tribute to Louis Armstrong), arr. Ted Ricketts
About esperanza spalding
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
Portland Overture Strings opens the concert.
Tickets are also available on the Portland’5 website or in person at the Schnitzer Box Office which opens at 2 hours before the concert.
