Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding lands UT-Dallas’ Brettell Award

Esperanza Spalding is a four-time Grammy winner, a performer so versatile and accomplished that National Public Radio once dubbed her “the jazz genius of the 21st century.”

And now a new award: She is the winner of the Richard Brettell Award in the Arts 2021, which is presented every two years by the University of Texas in Dallas. That means Spalding, 37, will be the third winner to receive the $ 150,000 award.

Founded by Brettell, the late UTD administrator and rainmaker who served as art critic for the Dallas Morning News for five years, the biennial award is aimed at leading talents in the visual arts, music, literature, performance and architecture / design. As with previous winners, Spalding will fly to Dallas this spring for a three-day visit to the Richardson campus.

There is one bonus, however: she will perform in a special concert with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in March.

It’s an opportunity for a local audience to see an artist whose creative arc began at 5 when she debuted as a violinist with the Chamber Music Society of Oregon.

Born in Portland, Oregon in 1984, Spalding grew up in a working class neighborhood to a single mother. As The Oregon Encyclopedia noted, “She grew up in a neighborhood marked by divestment, speculation, and real estate redlining, a neighborhood that has suffered from incidents of drug trafficking, gang wars, and abandoned homes. For Spalding, a fragile child who received home schooling due to attacks of illness, an opportunity arose in the form of music. “

In her biography of Spalding, the encyclopedia states that she “became fixated on stringed instruments after performing Yo-Yo Ma in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

In 2011 Spalding won her first Grammy for best new artist. She also has two wins for best jazz vocal album and another for instrumental arrangement. Her latest album, Songwright’s Apothecary Lab, was also nominated for a Grammy.

Even before the UTD honor, Spalding had maintained a connection to the Dallas area. Emily Elbert, a Coppell High School graduate, singer-songwriter and guitarist who toured with Spalding for a year in 2016, was delighted with her good friend’s latest success.

“It is so encouraging to see Esperanza have been selected for this award – she is a visionary and a deeply connected creative channel,” said Elbert of her Los Angeles home. She added, “It was an honor to see her magic unfold over the years, a while as a band member and then as a friend, but honestly I think we are all blessed to be with her for a while same planet while. “

One of Spalding’s achievements is that he appeared three times for former President Barack Obama at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, once at his request.

In this file photo dated June 27, 2010, Esperanza Spalding appears at the BET Awards in Los Angeles.(Matt Sayles / AP)

Nils Roemer, interim dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, said the selection committee – made up of UTD officials and CEOs from the DSO and the Dallas Opera – was impressed that Spalding had achieved so much in such a short time.

“Esperanza already has a reputation as a jazz visionary,” says Roemer, who also directs the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies. “She’s so creative, she pushes boundaries and takes risks.”

“Esperanza Spalding was an inspiring choice for the Brettell Award,” UTD official Inga Musselman said in a statement. “She is recognized worldwide as a jazz visionary who brings diversity, imagination and excellence to the music world. Our students will be happy to meet them next spring. “

The Brettell Award 2021 is the first to be presented since the death of its namesake in July 2020. As founding director of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at UTD, Brettell played a key role in the selection of the 2017 and 2019 winners.

The first winner was landscape architect Peter Walker, who designed the outdoor garden of the Nasher Sculpture Center as well as UTD’s Campus Landscape Enhancement Project. In 2019, the Mexican diplomat Jorge Alberto Lozoya was selected for his work in international cooperation and cultural affairs.

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