Heads Up Signs Bassist Esperanza Spalding

  I  

Heads Up International has signed acoustic bassist, singer and composer Esperanza Spalding, whose debut recording for the label will be released in late spring 2008.

“I am excited about working with Esperanza,” said Dave Love, president of Heads Up International. “She is a wonderful young person with so many gifts. She can deliver a song in three languages and her bass playing is at a very high level.”

Born in 1984, Spalding was 15 when she began working as musician at a blues club in Portland, Ore. Within a year, she was gigging as a bassist and vocalist with different groups, including two septets, a trio and a fusion group called Noise for Pretend that released two albums on the independent label Hush Records.

More info: headsup.com



  • Rodney_Holmes_Courtesy_Meinl.jpg

    A drummer’s drummer, Rodney Holmes gigged with everyone from Joe Zawinul and Carlos Santana to Steve Kimock and the Brecker Brothers.

  • DB26_Critics_Poll_Montage.jpg

    Clockwise from top left, Mary Halvorson, Patricia Brennan, Adam O’Farrill, Keith Jarrett’s At the Deer Head Inn: The Complete Recordings, Sheila Jordan and Jaki Byard.

  • Abdhullah_Ibrahim_Detroit_Jazz_Festival_2022_by_Michael_Jackson.jpg

    Ibrahim was an early jazz acolyte, studying the music via 78s he would buy from soldiers stationed in South Africa — who also gave him the nickname “Dollar.”

  • DB26_Joe_Lovano_by_Michael_Jackson.jpg

    Joe Lovano’s Paramount Quartet will record live at New York’s Village Vanguard for ECM records on Aug. 26–27.

  • promoFINALdress-1_copy.jpg

    “There was something about her tone and sound and phrasing — an intimacy, a vulnerability, an honesty,” says Joshua Redman, who produced Cavassa’s record after she toured with his band.


On Sale Now
August 2026
74th Annual DownBeat Critics Poll
Look Inside
Subscribe
Print | Digital | iPad