esperanza spalding (Portland, OR), a 2024 Doris Duke Artist Award recipient, is a jazz artist trained and initiated 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, regenerative agriculture, urban land stewardship and artist-sanctuary custodianship. She co-founded and co-directs Prismid Inc., a nonprofit that creates and stewards artist residency, performance and workshop space in Portland. spalding continues to collaborate and perform in new productions of “…(Iphigenia),” an opera written by Wayne Shorter, for which she wrote the libretto and co-produced its 2021-2022 premieres. spalding is developing a mockumentary in collaboration with brontë velez and the San Francisco Symphony, and researching and developing liberation rituals in jazz and Black dance. Through the Songwrights Apothecary Lab, spalding is continuing a lifelong collaboration with practitioners in various fields relating to sound, healing and cognition to develop music with enhanced therapeutic potential. The first jazz artist to be recognized with the Grammy for best new artist, spalding has received four other Grammys, most recently for best jazz vocal album in 2020 and 2022.