esperanza spalding at the Chan Centre
Aug. 29: Spalding was retrospective with Matthew Stevens on guitar, Morgan Guerin on sax/keys/bass, & Eric Doob on drums
esperanza spalding played the Chan Centre's season-opening concert on August 29th. She didn't have a new album out in 2025, and she wasn't on a big tour. That said, she had played a run of dates earlier in August; she was coming right from a Chicago Jazz Festival show and would head next to play Robert Glasper's Black Radio Experience in Napa.
In her band were her frequent collaborator Matthew Stevens on guitar, multi-instrumentalist Morgan Guerin, and Eric Doob on drums. She led them out at a comfortably slow pace, then she picked up the upright bass and began enumerating frantic vocals.
"So, have you prayed to your phone today?" That lyric from the show's first song could jolt an anxiously affluent demographic, but Spalding prefaced it with enthusiastic talk about how we were here to be in the moment. "Dancing the Animal (mind)" was one of six songs on the setlist – half the show – that came from her 2018 album 12 Little Spells. The songs from that album, including the one that was up next, all have parentheticals.
