Five-time GRAMMY award-winning bassist, guitarist, and singer esperanza spalding is coming to the Skaneateles Festival this summer.
Renowned for her innovative fusion of jazz, soul, and classical music, she said, “Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.”
She will perform at the festival on Saturday, Aug. 9, at 8 p.m. at the Robinson Pavilion at Anyela’s Vineyards in Skaneateles.
Joining her is her duo partner, the Argentine pianist Leonardo Genovese.
Born in 1984 in Portland, Oregon, spalding is an eaabibacliitoti (European-African ancestored being influenced by American cultures living in Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island) artist, trained and initiated in the North American (masculine) jazz lineage and tradition.
Her work interweaves through various combinations of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, regenerative agriculture, urban land and artist-sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie, friend, while collaboratively decolonizing within and through her hometown community.
She founded and serves as co-director of Prismid Sanctuary, a non-profit that creates and stewards free artist residency, performance, and workshop space in Portland, Oregon (Prismid.org).
With her dance project “Off Brand gOdds” and her therapeutic music incubator “Songwrights Apothecary Lab” she co-leads performance, teaching, workshop, and therapeutic-arts research residencies in collaboration with colleges and arts venues across the Americas and throughout the world. She is a 2024 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award and a 2016 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” Fellow.
The Skaneateles Festival is announcing one headliner each Friday in February for their upcoming season July 31 to Aug. 23.
The full lineup will be announced and season pass sales will begin on March 5.
Individual tickets will go on sale May 1. For more information on the upcoming season and to get tickets, visit skanfest.org.
Since 1980, the Skaneateles Festival has grown from a few concerts in the local library to a month-long celebration each summer that attracts some of the world’s finest musicians, involves community volunteers, and draws audiences from all over the Northeastern United States. It is
the Festival’s mission to be one of the nation’s outstanding summer music festivals, set in the beauty of the Finger Lakes region, community-inspired, and recognized for its creative and dynamic concert programming, education, and outreach.
