Emily’s D+Evolution is much more than Esperanza Spalding’s latest album. It is also an all-encompassing, rock-infused, jazz-informed artistic expression that incorporates stage design and performance art. The bassist/ vocalist/composer, who was born Esperanza Emily Spalding, explains, “We’re setting up a world, and a premise to play the music within. We see Emily as a character within this world. We see how she comes in and we see how she engages. She is the embodiment of a kind of energy that needed to come through in my life. She’s very playful and she’s innocent, in a way. She’s not of this world so she doesn’t understand the rules and the dichotomies. She’s also a reconciling force because she engages with all aspects of the world around her and, by doing so, she brings about a kind of mutual reconciliation. She brings people together without one diminishing the other in the common space of play and creative expression.”

Emily came to you in a moment of epiphany?

On Oct. 17, 2013, I was in my hotel room after a gig with Geri Allen and Terri Lyne Carrington. I was super restless and charged full of energy. It was the day before my birthday, so it was a natural level of excitement. I was lying there thinking and just started seeing these little vignettes and hearing this sound and these performances. There was this character and she had glasses and her name was Emily. I was digging on this little thing playing out in my mind, and I decided to leap into that. So the next day, I got my hair pressed because I knew that Emily’s hair had to be bound so she could feel gravity. I told Geri and Terry, “Let’s toast the birth of Emily.” And they were like, “OK, what is that?” When I told them what I was going to do, they were like, “Cool.”

How long did it take for your concept to manifest itself in music?

During that first evening, I heard a lot of things. I was watching the little vignettes and trying to make notes and sing reminders of what it looked like and sounded like. Some of those sketches ultimately became songs on the record. Most of what the sketches led me to was a concept and an aesthetic, an energy that the music has to it. From that moment on, I was writing it. At the end of that tour, at the baggage claim, I had written the chorus part to “Judas” and, from that moment on, I was committing myself to Emily’s music.

In describing your performance of this material, you’ve said, “We’re allowed to pretend to be ourselves.”

I think it’s true. It’s fun—we’re doing it every day, all day. I dress up before I leave my house. Why don’t I just get five pairs of the same jeans and wear what I wore yesterday? I dress up today because I think this outfit is going to show something about me that is important to me. I’m doing something in dressing up to go out and be myself. In the realm of roleplay or acting or performing, you literally are pretending to get closer to what you’re all about. Sometimes the amplified state is closer to the reality than the undressed, unadorned state—at least it can invite someone in to see an aspect of the true you that they may not notice if you weren’t “pretending.”

Ginger Baker and Cream had a role in your creative process?

Two days before we were going to go into the studio in LA to record the first batch—we did this in three batches—I stayed with Wayne and Carolina Shorter. Wayne’s a movie maniac, so we’re always watching movies, and this Beware of Mr. Baker documentary had come out. He asked me if I had seen it and I said no, so we watched it. I did not know who Ginger Baker was. I’d heard the name Cream, but I didn’t know their music. As I’m watching this man’s development from this jazz-loving, West-African-music-loving devotee of the craft to this epic rock pillar, I said, “Oh, my God, I feel like that. I identify with that trajectory—you love this music, you love the masters of the music, and you want to get loud and write songs with your friends and rock out.”

I realized we had, in our own way, sort of stumbled upon not a language, but a sensibility in terms of using the vocabulary, the vernacular of improvised music and the things that we do instrumentally within that vernacular and how they get expressed in a rock aesthetic. I found a kindred spirit, at least musically. So I went into the studio and was like, “Oh, my God, you guys, Ginger Baker exists!” And they were all like, “Duh.” We were about to go into the studio, so it’s not like we suddenly changed everything because we heard that, but it really bolstered my confidence because I was scared shitless. I still am, most of the time, when we’re doing this project.

Is there another film that Wayne Shorter has screened for you that has made a significant impact on your life?

The Red Shoes—that’s his favorite and now it’s one of my favorite movies. I’ll watch it any time, any day, five times in a row. I love it so much. That was a big boon to my life. I remember, when I was in elementary school, they played for us a sequence from that film that is just a performance of the actual ballet The Red Shoes, and it scared the shit out of me. So it was cool to have it come back around through my most important mentor and to see how it spoke to me now as a grown-up. It’s really one of the most epic films ever made. I think it’s kind of the best of all worlds.

You’re working on an opera with Wayne Shorter?

I have been assigned the task, the gift, the journey and the mission of writing the libretto. I’m still really in research/sketch mode, but he’s writing the music. He chose the topic material, he’s the philosophical mastermind behind the project, and I will be writing the libretto. We’re looking for our patrons of the arts. It’s a long, slogging process to get a new work funded and produced, so we’re still in that phase— Wayne is not because he absolutely needs to just be a genius and sit there and write. So the people who are on this beautiful, unpaid team of love—who have committed themselves to seeing this opera come to fruition—are still in that phase of walking in our partners. If you know any barons or dukes out there who want to be a part of history in the making, please send them my way.