* En anglais uniquement
Spirit Fingers is a contemporary jazz quartet based in Los Angeles and formed during the breakout of the West Coast Get Down scene that birthed
Kamasi Washington,
Thundercat,
Kendrick Lamar,
Miles Mosley, and many others. Their sound combines the very best of early-'70s jazz fusion (complete with ambitious tempo shifts and key changes), hip-hop, pop, and modern funk.
Spero -- bandleader, pianist, and chief composer and arranger -- is a formally trained musician with a degree in Music Composition and Jazz Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his school career,
Spero met
Herbie Hancock at the Ravinia Festival and the older musician took him under his wing and introduced him not only to new ways of hearing and writing music in his head, but also to Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism;
Spero has been a practitioner ever since.
Before moving to Los Angeles, he played with drummer
Makaya McCraven, saxophonist
Frank Catalano, trumpeter
Marquis Hill, and others on the Windy City scene. After moving to the West Coast,
Spero became a touring and studio musician and the musical director for
Halsey. He formed
Spirit Fingers in 2015 with internationally renowned bassist
Hadrien Feraud, drummer Mike Mitchell, and guitarist
Dario Chiazzolino.
After his first tour with
Halsey,
Spero was exhausted from the road and undergoing the end of a personal relationship; he sought a way of wedding his newfound pop and urban influences with those of his formal musical training in jazz and fusion. After setting out on the road again, he spent each evening after gigs in the bus composing music for the band he envisioned. After returning from the
Halsey tour, he tried out the music he had written and arranged with some heavy-hitter musicians in Chicago. His manager Mark Cavanaugh heard the new sounds and told him to pursue this direction, leading the pianist to undertake an exodus to Los Angeles. Upon arrival, he began scoring television commercials and film scores. He worked with rappers and members of the West Coast Get Down before finding the perfect balance of players for
Spirit Fingers. All were top-flight studio and performance personnel. The band's early live performances were celebrated by everyone from
Hancock to local DJs to industry personnel. They signed to Shanachie in 2017 and commenced cutting their self-titled debut album, which was co-produced by
Spero and
McCraven and executive-produced by Cavanaugh. The recording was issued in the spring of 2018 and received universal critical acclaim from major jazz and popular music journals and newspapers. After intensive touring the band signed to Ropeadope for 2020's
Peace. The 12-track outing showcased exploratory and evocative electronic and organic soundscapes that combined the muscularity of '70s-era jazz fusion and improvisation with 21st century pop and hip-hop sensibilities. ~ Thom Jurek