Esperanza Spalding is an eaabibacliitoti* artist, trained andinitiated in the North American jazz lineage and tradition. Her work interweaves various combinations of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, restorative urban land & artist-sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie, friend. She founded and serves as co-director of Prismid Sanctuary, a non-profit that creates and stewards restorative artist residency & workshop space in Portland, Oregon (Prismid.org).

With her dance project “Off Brand gOdds” and the Songwrights Apothecary Lab she leads multi-week performances, workshops, teaching, and therapeutic-arts research residencies. She is a 2024 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award and a 2016 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” Fellow. *European-African ancestored being influenced by American cultures living in Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island.