Esperanza Spalding, Liberation Fighter for Jazz

Saturday June 12, 2010

From Los Angeles Times

Esperanza Spalding, liberation fighter for jazz
The 25-year-old bassist is rapidly gaining listeners. Among them, her favorites might be the 5-year-olds she introduces to free jazz.

By: Chris Barton
Published: June 12, 2010

If you really want to hear Esperanza Spalding get excited talking about jazz, ask her about its effect on 5-year-olds.

Speaking by phone from her home in Portland, Ore., the effervescent young bassist’s conversational tempo shifts into another gear as she talks about leading a jazz workshop at an elementary school. Working with pianist and band mate Leo Genovese, Spalding introduced free improvisation to the kids as a musical twist on Cops and Robbers. Spalding promised to follow Genovese’s lead, and that the kids should clap when she caught him.

“So Leo will play a phrase and maybe it’s really crazy and I can’t follow him and I’ll go ‘Awww.’ And if he plays a phrase and I catch it and answer, they clap! They get it!” she said as a tea kettle whistled in the background. “That’s a very oversimplified version of what happens in the music and improvisation, but it’s also kind of the core of it.

“I feel like if a 5-year-old can get that … maybe something’s wrong with the way [free jazz] is being presented,” she said with a laugh.

To read the full article click here

Radio Song (clip)	1:01	Esperanza Spalding
Black Gold	5:17	Esperanza Spalding

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*Radio Music Society Trailer
Esperanza Spalding at the Oscars
Black Gold
Esperanza Spalding at the Nobel Prize Ceremony

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