Featuring Debra Lee, Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper, & More

Esperanza Spalding is a singer, songwriter, jazz bassist, composer and arranger. Upon graduating from the Berklee College of Music, she became the youngest instructor in its history at the age of 20. In 2009, Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama, selected Esperanza to perform at the ceremony and concert. Esperanza became the first jazz musician to win a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 2011. She has collaborated with some of the most notable music artists such as: Stevie Wonder, Prince, Herbie Hancock, Bobby McFerrin, Patti Austin (with whom she toured internationally in her second semester at Berklee), and Terri Lyne Carrington. In July 2017, Spalding was appointed Professor of the Practice of Music at Harvard University. Spalding continues to release albums showcasing her unique bass and vocal styles. In 2018 she released 12 Little Spells as 12 individual tracks. On January 27, 2020 the album won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

Robert Glasper is a pianist, producer, composer and musical director. He credits his mother, Kim Yvette Glasper who sang jazz and blues professionally, as his first musical influence. While attending the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City, he met future collaborator neo-soul singer Bilal Oliver. The two artists would soon emerge as part of the iconic hip-hop and neo-soul movement alongside artists Jill Scott, The Roots and J Dilla - during which time Glasper became music director for Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def). Glasper recorded several albums over the years with various collaborators and it was his album Black Radio, an eclectic mix of jazz, hip-hop, R&B, and rock & roll and notable guest vocalists such as Lupe Fiasco, Bilal, Lalah Hathaway, Erykah Badu and Yasiin Bey that earned him his first Grammy for Best R&B Album in 2012. His follow up Black Radio 2 which yielded the Stevie Wonder cover track “Jesus Children of America” (featuring Lalah Hathaway and Malcolm-Jamal Warner) afforded him his second Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance. In 2015 Glasper served as producer, composer, and arranger for the movie Miles Ahead, a biopic documenting the life of legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, whom Glasper cites as being one of his major musical influences. In September 2020 Glasper collaborated with Common to write and perform the ending theme song for the educational Netflix Show “Bookmarks” in which Black celebrities and artists read children's books by Black authors.