Esperanza Spalding Set To Record New Album On Facebook Live & Joins Harvard Faculty


The rise of social media has allowed fans to have a front row seat into the daily lives of their favorite celebs. For music fans, that has translated into more intimate looks into the recording and/or rehearsal process of their favorite artists. Now, Esperanza Spalding is taking things a step further by inviting fans to watch her record her newest album, Exposure, via Facebook Live beginning September 12th.

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The award-winning bassist/performer will record the album in its entirety from start-to-finish over the course of 77 hours (roughly three days) and stream the entire process on her Facebook page. "Once the live stream cameras start rolling, you can witness every second of the process (including taking breaks, pulling hair out, trying to find lyrics, happy musical mistakes—even sleeping in the studio—yikes!)," she explained via email. The event will not be one-sided, however. Spalding will have a Facebook monitor in place so that she can keep up with viewers' live comments and even teases that fans may end up contributing to her creative process. To help announce the project, she uploaded a series of quirky videos that provide some insight into what fans can expect.

Once the album is completed, Spalding will only be pressing up 7,777 copies of the completed product on both CD and vinyl. Her new approach with her latest studio album was inspired by her desire to get back to the excitement of improvisation and instinct. "The necessity to keep going, make beauty and song out of all that happens because it's all LIVE, draws up another depth of creative facility that can't be reached when you know you can try again tomorrow," she explains. For fans who may worry that she'll flub it somehow, she reveals that she has been practicing creating music this way for the past few months, adding that "it's pretty awesome."

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Hitting the studio isn't the only thing on her calendar in the coming months, however. Spalding will also be taking her talents to Harvard University where she will join the faculty for the 2017-2018 school year as a professor in the school's Music Department.

Although Harvard students will have to wait until the spring semester to take a seat in Spalding's classroom, they will be able to tune in (along with the rest of us) when she embarks on her live recording process September 12th-15th beginning at 9 a.m. PST. So grab your snacks, check out these previews and mark your calendars, because this is one livestream you definitely won't want to miss. And don't forget to pre-order your copy of Exposure before it hits stores because once those 7,777 copies are sold out, Spalding promises that's that by way of physical copies.

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