Mike Stern and Esperanza Spalding at Iridium

When Esperanza Spalding took Best New Artist at the Grammy’s, Justin Bieber fans shrieked and fans of jazz, our country’s best and most-ignored music, were thrilled.

In between those poles, there’s a vast crowd of people who probably don’t deliberately listen to either jazz or Bieber.  To everyone in between who’s reading this, get down to the Iridium in Midtown this week to see Esperanza Spalding with guitarist Mike Stern.

You’ll see a Grammy-winning phenom in a tiny room, the sound will be excellent, and if you’re a passive or accidental jazz listener you’ll be shocked by how good the music is.  Today’s best jazz is as amazing as the canonized Miles and Coltrane, and it sounds like 2011.

Simply put, go to the Iridium, and be blown away.

If you don’t normally listen to jazz, Stern is basically an archduke. He’s not king, but he is royalty: he played with Miles, has had a great career and a loyal contingent of hardcore fans in the tiny but die hard world of jazz. Plus the guy can shred (this will come up again).

Stern is currently in the midst of a week-long, two-set-per-night summer stand at the Iridium, and last night, the second-set crowd of about 75 people wasn’t a sellout, but it was crowded and buzzing.

The crowd included some of the best bass players in the world.

“Will Lee is here somewhere, Vic Wooten too,” said the devoted Stern fan sitting next to me, also named Mike. The guy across the table points out Julius Pastorius in the crowd, son of bass icon Jaco Pastorius.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to credit Esperanza Spalding for the rarefied audience.

She’s a true jazz talent: magnetic, with great material as a leader, but an impact backing player as well.  On upright bass, she’s all joy, ferocious intent and studied technique (some of that honed at the Berklee College of Music, where Stern studied more than a decade before Spalding was born).

Spalding scatted on a Stern tune, “Avenue B,” and soloed a little, but otherwise was a bedrock of the quartet alongside the insanely brutal and precise force of drummer Lionel Cordew.

Let this be said: Mike Stern is the star of his own show.  As masterly in his craft as Scorsese, Stern strolls the stage with the excited, lanky vibe of Mick Jagger, crying out for bandmates solos when he’s not ripping out his own.

As sax player Bob Malach blew, Stern pretended to be blown of the stage by the solo, before popping back up to shred, widening Malach’s eyes. Esperanza stared on happily in disbelief, looking cartoonishly excited.

Ultimately, what does the triumph of Spalding over Bieber mean? Jazz fans rejoice and go to see her in a small New York club, while Bieber keeps selling out arenas.

Well, in the final accounting, that is the meaning:  Spalding is a beacon to let you know that great jazz is alive. No matter how bad the economics of it, jazz is still bad-ass. It’s waiting for you, in a small club in Midtown.

An incredibly talented band with killing veterans and the rookie of the year is setting up their gear. Your move.