Esperanza Spalding and Her Jazz Bass Still on the Move After Her Grammy Nomination

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."

Every jazz musician dreams of reaching audiences outside the genre's core, but it's Spalding who has done this perhaps better than anyone since Diana Krall. And the fact is, she's done it recently with the not exactly crossover-friendly album 'Chamber Music Society,' which features the usual jazz trio of piano, bass and drums, as well as a string trio and a second singer. Instead of doing Bach or Beethoven, she mainly wrote originals, with string-arrangement help from Gil Goldstein. When asked about her latest success with this album, Spalding sounds as surprised as anyone.

"This stuff has been amazingly successful," the Portland, Ore.-native, Austin, Texas-based bassist and composer says of the music. "I am surprised, to be honest. The reception has been great. Five weeks of touring in Europe, and then another two or three weeks in the US. Then we have plans to go back to Europe and do more stuff in the States."

Watch Esperanza Spalding's 'Little Fly' Video

Yet even as audiences outside of jazz have been supportive of her music and career, Spalding has no interest in leaving jazz behind. When she talks about the Grammys, she refers to herself as someone outside the machinations in place for other forms of popular music.

"Because I have the protection of being a visitor from the realm of jazz, I don't have as many expectations placed upon me," she says. "I can still be myself and there are fewer expectations for me to fit into that persona or mold of a mainstream entertainer. I can go to these other kind of events and play a bass solo over some chord changes and people can see what I do. But I'm not expected to cater to whatever is considered the commercially savvy thing for an entertainer to do right now."

With this in mind, don't expect her to give up her gig as the bassist with Joe Lovano's US5 or the other sideman (or -woman) gigs that come along – along with Lovano, she's appeared on the albums of guitarists Mike Stern and Lionel Loueke, drummer Mauricio Zottarelli, trumpeter Christian Scott and others.

"I like to work. I like music," she explains. "The real issue is that the solo career is the odd man out in my life right now. I have much more experience playing bass for other bandleaders than leading my own gigs, and I love being a sideman just as much. That's why I got into music. It wasn't to become my own phenomenon; it was to play music with other people. So whomever wants to play with me, and I can, and I'm into it, and inspired? Then off I go."

She'll go to the Grammys in February, but first is a stop at the Kennedy Center to play a one-off with Herbie Hancock and Jack DeJohnette as part of a ceremony commemorating the 50th Anniversary of John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Playing with two jazz legends as part of the this historical milestone is cool, but what she's really excited is that she'll finally get to meet Yo-Yo Ma, whose appearance on the 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' children's prgram inspired her to take up music when she was four.

"He's the one who led to all this all those years ago," she says with a giddy laugh. "I'm very grateful. I can't wait to give him a good handshake. I can't wait to meet the man."


Here's what our friends at All About Jazz have been working on:

INTERVIEWS

Mr Ho's Orchestrotica: Endless Bachelor Party

Conference Call: Evolution of a Burning Bush


REVIEWS

'V-Flow,' Eric Vloeimans

'Perpetual Motion,' Donny McCaslin

'Wingwalker,' Jane Ira Bloom

'Shut Up and Dance,' Orchestre National de Jazz

'Aurora,' Verneri Pohjola

'Chronos,' Mike DiRubbo


FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS

'The Quest,' by Tassos Spiliotopoulos (from 'Archipelagos')

'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,' by Frank Macchia (from 'Son of Folk Songs
for Jazzers')