Esperanza Spalding: Earth to Heaven | NPR MUSIC FRONT ROW

Fulfilling the performance-art vision of her spirit-muse Emily, Esperanza Spalding played the music of her forthcoming album Emily's D+Evolution in concert at BRIC House in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Thursday, March 3. WFUV and NPR Music presented a live video webstream of the performance as part of the First Listen Live series. Emily's D+Evolution marks a new sound for Spalding. Here, she picks up the electric bass (and occasionally the piano) and surrounds herself with a power trio of electric guitar and drums — a louder, proggier, weirder funk-rock direction for the jazz-trained bassist and vocalist. It's part of a broad theatrical vision for the character Emily, inspired by broad philosophical musings on resourcefulness and the nature of progress. On stage, she was surrounded by choreographed routines, a marionette closet and three backup singers dressed all in yellow. "Whether you want to see it as devolution and evolution, and the place where they co-exist without one diminishing t