Veteran music journalist Robert Christgau’s review of bassist, singer and composer Esperanza Spalding’s 2016 album Emily’s D+ Evolution compared Spalding to “the Joni Mitchell who so wanted to be a jazzbo.” That’s true, and it’s also somewhat trenchant — after all, Mitchell wasn’t really a jazzbo on her great 1970s records The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, which incorporated jazz players like Robben Ford, Larry Carlton and Jaco Pastorius into her pop-rock music. Spalding is a jazz musician who has collaborated with artists as diverse as saxophonist Wayne Shorter, R&B master Raphael Saadiq, and dancer and choreographer Kayla Farrish. Her 2024 release Esperanza + Milton pairs her with 83-year-old Brazilian singer and songwriter Milton Nascimento, whose 1970s music — including his 1975 collaboration with the aforementioned Shorter, Native Dancer — is the Brazilian equivalent to, say, the work of David Crosby, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon in the same decade. Esperanza + Milton includes a nice cover of Nascimento’s supremely lyrical 1972 song “Cais.” Spalding and Nascimento also cover John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s “A Day in the Life,” a song that tends to resist interpretation. Like the rest of Esperanza + Milton, the track repurposes pop in the name of jazz, which seems authentic enough to me.
7:30 p.m. at City Winery
609 Lafayette St.
