Esperanza Spalding: Live at BRIC, NPR MUSIC FRONT ROW

Fulfilling the performanceart vision of her spiritmuse Emily, Esperanza Spalding played the music of her forthcoming album Emily s D+Evolution in concert at BRIC House in Brooklyn, N. Y. on Thursday, March 3. WFUV and NPR Music presented a live video webstream of the performance as part of the First Listen Live series. Emily s D+Evolution marks a new sound for Spalding. Here, she picks up the electric bass (and occasionally the piano) and surrounds herself with a power trio of electric guitar and drums a louder, proggier, weirder funkrock direction for the jazztrained bassist and vocalist. It s part of a broad theatrical vision for the character Emily, inspired by broad philosophical musings on resourcefulness and the nature of progress. On stage, she was surrounded by choreographed routines, a marionette closet and three backup singers dressed all in yellow. Whether you want to see it as devolution and evolution, and the place where they coexist without one diminishing the other, or you could look a