Esperanza Spalding
Chamber Music Society

He plays jazz. He plays the double bass. He sings divinely. He has a good appearance.

He garners universal acclaim largely justified by the two previous works, Junio (2006) and Esperanza (2008). All of this sets the stage for listening to Chamber Music Society.
Cherry on top, Esperanza sets William Blake's "The Fly" to music (does "the doors of perception" ring a bell?), opening with "Little Fly" (I am not - A fly like thee - Or art not thou - A man like me?).

The album, defined as "intimate" and "long meditated" by Spalding, seems to have been conceived in a place of collected beauty, for an ensemble consisting of a double jazz and strings trio, and takes us back to those places with the enchantment of her voice, the absolute protagonist in the dramaturgy of "Wild is the Wind", second only to Nina Simone (ubi maior) and far ahead of the White Duke. In Jobim's "Inutil Paisagem," the interpretation by the faerie queene holds its own against those of Caetano Veloso or Elis Regina, and even if some cloying Afro-Argentine academia is made with "Chacarera," "Apple Blossom," with Milton Nascimento migrating duets, is a striking case of hyper-barricaded excellence, with "Winter Sun," the little mouse Spalding (I quote Odradek), after allowing the strings a lunch break, finds groove, mood, and jazz again.

Esperanza Spalding is a talent, she is aware of it, and to confirm after twenty years of violin that she knows what the liturgy of chamber music is, with Gil Goldstein's arrangement, she relies on programmatic refinement, a little bit stiff: for a result that if "can cause arousal" to the Rolling Stones reviewer risks here and there to inhibit the satyr, bore the cultured tetragon, and disperse the masses.

The point of balance of Chamber Music Society (sienteme, Esperanzuccia) should have been placed between the dynamic of the first Return to Forever (the one of "Sometime Ago," "La Fiesta") and the lyricism of "Nocturne" by Charlie Haden, with the supervision of quite another Gil, and we would now be talking about a masterpiece: however, time plays in favor of Portland's little charmer, "and gins to spread his leaf before the fair sunshine."