Esperanza Spalding and Her Jazz Bass Still on the Move

Monday January 24, 2011

From Spinner

Esperanza Spalding and Her Jazz Bass Still on the Move After Her Grammy Nomination
By: Tad Hendrickson

It was just over a year ago that I wrote about Esperanza Spalding in this space. Back then, the bassist was hot off her performances at the White House and President Obama’s Nobel Prize awards ceremony. That is enough for most people to hang a career hat on, but then came the 2011 Grammy nominations: Spalding was nominated in the Best New Artist category, going up against the likes of Justin Bieber, Drake, Mumford and Sons and Florence and the Machine.

Talk about breaking out of the jazz ghetto, the last jazz artist I remember in a non-jazz Grammy category was Herbie Hancock for his Joni Mitchell project, which grabbed a surprise win for Album of the Year in 2008. Ever the optimist, Spalding sees Hancock’s win as proof that voters aren’t afraid of jazz. With this in mind, she makes no apologies for her own nomination.

“I am new in that I haven’t been around that long, and I’m an artist,” she points out. “So it fits. Somebody out there thinks that in their mind that I am one of the best. It’s flattering. I’ll take it. I actually kind of like it because in the jazz category it can be so specific. It can be ‘best new vocal arrangement on a small group,’ or whatever. I like that I am acknowledged on a broader basis. It’s a category that is free from genre, and I like the idea of not being specifically attached to one idiom and limit where my listeners can come from.”

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
Black Gold
Esperanza Spalding at the Nobel Prize Ceremony
Esperanza Spalding at the Oscars

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