Esperanza, new hope of jazz?

If you're one of the people who got to know Esperanza Spalding and/or her music during her time at Berklee - or even if you're not - you'll want to grab a copy of the March 15 New Yorker. John Colapinto profiles the singer-bassist-composer in admiring fashion, catching her onstage with McCoy Tyner and Ravi Coltrane (!) and at home in Austin. And he draws her as the great hope for jazzers who want to find the next thing, not obsessively recreate the past a la Wynton Marsalis. You'll have to subscribe to read the full piece online, but at the abstract page there are links to audio and video accompanying the article. (I'm not going to link you to her web site because it has a splash page and then pops up a new window for the actual content, which takes forever to load. In other words, it's everything I hate in web design. But it's esperanzaspaldingdotcom if you want to go.)