Name: Esperanza Spalding
Locality: Portland, Oregon
Crayon Color: Dandelion White: Weightless, airy, and spritzy without being ditzy.
Locality: Portland, Oregon
Crayon Color: Dandelion White: Weightless, airy, and spritzy without being ditzy.
The story: In her tyke days, the multi-racial (Welsh, Hispanic, Native American) and lingual Esperanza (esperanza means hope in Spanish) may have held up a hand when asked what age she was, but she soon put those same fingers to work, dabbling at the violin. After yawning at that, she picked up the bass and joined a blues band of elders. Performing with them, she learned the improvisational craft of the genre of jazz. While she admitted her stumbles, she says that they liked her groove. “The notes weren’t that great! That’s all that matters from the bass, though, is the feel, and I had a good feel.”
Her “good feel” matched her virtuosity so much that she aced a key audition at 16, winning a scholarship to Berklee College of Music. She held a benefit concert to get her bass across the country and went on tour with Patti Austin to pay for the rest of her tenure. On the same note, Esperanza became the youngest professor in the schools history, and, while there, toured with Joe Lovano and Pat Methany.
Junjo was her first introduction to the world, before Esperanza, which sported her talents in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. The maven has toured around the world and since followed up this fall with a CD called Chamber Music Society. Most recently she has performed in the tribute for Prince at the BET Awards and will support him on his "Welcome 2 America" tour mid-December. Just this past Wednesday, she received a 2011 Grammy nod in the category for "Best New Artist" along with the likes of Drake, Florence + the Machine, Justin Bieber, and Mumford & Sons. Will February 13 be one jazzy night? One will have to wait and see. (Esperanza Splading EPK 1)
UPDATE: Esperanza Spalding has won the 2011 Grammy Award for "Best New Artist." Congratulations!
Coloring Outside the Lines Because: Esperanza sings an artsy side of vulnerability, never pitiful, but almost quietly powerful. She righteously describes emotion. Sometimes she jumps back and forth between singing/playing with and with out order, yet never off key. Play any type of improv riff for no matter how long on a sax, a guitar, a piano, whatever, she can scat to it, a bar behind, perfectly. You can hear her smile when she sings, and live, you can see her smile when she sings. Jazz has never looked brighter.
Think: Soiree; get-together; dinners; black tie affairs. Royals; Obama; Brooklyn—tunes to Afro-naturals, herbalists, and vegetarians, free spirits, short nails, parks, a splash of ice cold water to the face, freedom in technical meticulousness, anything that twinkles, diamonds/stars/teeth applicable.
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