Sixteen years ago, when esperanza spalding made her breakout second album — before she’d performed at the White House, won Best New Artist at the Grammys, or served on the music faculty at Harvard — she made a point of opening with a song by Milton Nascimento. For spalding (who stylizes her name in lowercase), the iconic Brazilian troubadour exerts an influence as deep, intense and magical as that of the late Wayne Shorter, their mutual friend. So it makes sense that spalding describes their luminous new album, Milton + esperanza, as the realization of a dream. In this episode, she explains why it was also “surreal, challenging, scary, terrifying,” and how all the elements were made to harmonize. And we’ll hear Greg and Nate’s differing opinions on Native Dancer, the Shorter-Nascimento collaboration that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and looms as a clear precursor here.
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