Grammy-winning jazz artist esperanza spalding says she gets chills when she thinks about the first time she heard the voice of Milton Nascimento, played over the stereo at a dinner party. She was a student at Berklee College of Music, and Nascimento, a Brazilian singer-songwriter many decades her senior, became an inspiration to her. The two eventually became friends, performing with each other on one of spalding’s albums, on stage and at Nascimento’s home in Brazil. [...] In today's session, you'll hear spalding and Nascimento perform songs from that album in an exclusive mini-concert recorded live in Brazil for World Cafe.

Deemed a prodigy as a teenager by contemporary jazz connoisseurs, Spalding in 2011 became the first jazz artist to win best new artist at the Grammys (over fellow nominees Drake and Justin Bieber), and the youngest faculty member ever at the prestigious Berklee College of Music. Now 39, she's one of the most heralded jazz artists of her generation, an inspired booking for the Marcus Performing Arts Center's first jazz series concert of the season at Uihlein Hall. Establishing a contemplative environment with an introductory pause, Spalding and company extended the mood through the music, her radiant voice striking a solitary, soaring note — albeit just above a whisper — for a full 12 seconds at the start of set opener "Formwela 1." She subtly strummed her stand-up bass, and Doob gently slid a drumstick against the rim of a cymbal, as Spalding's repetitive elongated vocal notes formed into words, imploring us to "sink into the ground," her poetic phrasing painting a picture of air that had become "miraculously clear," of a calm rising from the "belly of your sway."

The Hejira world music radio show aired Jeff Spitzer-Resnick’s interview of 5 time Grammy award winner esperanza spalding the morning before her show at the Wisconsin Union Theater. he Hejira world music radio show aired Jeff Spitzer-Resnick’s interview of 5 time Grammy award winner esperanza spalding the morning before her show at the Wisconsin Union Theater. [She speaks about her new collaboration with Milton Nascimiento] "I picked songs of his that I love to pieces and haunt me and the ones that I thought hadn’t been overdone, you know, because some of like, you’d really have to have a reason to do Travessia. At this point, it’s been done so many times, so many beautiful ways. Then songs of mine that I thought would be a good counterpoint or a compliment, you know, to the songs of his that to me were really the pillars of the album."