Music is her first love
Jazz musician and singer Esperanza Spalding grew up loving and learning music. The awards and fame are a bonus, writes Mathew Scott
When fame found Esperanza Spalding, everything that followed seemed to come so naturally to the singer-composer-bass player that it was hard not to think she'd been ready for its arrival all her life.
Outside jazz circles, the first major focus on Spalding came in 2011, when the then 27-year-old brushed aside the behemoth that is Justin Bieber to win the award for best new artist at the 53rd Grammys - the first time a jazz artist had ever won the prize.
But what we were really witnessing then was the culmination of years of study, practice and learning, and the acknowledgement of a talent that is as rare and unique as it is diverse. Overnight sensations are, after all, never really that at all.
I can get attention or no attention but as long as I'm doing music, it doesn't matter what else is happening
The laidback ease with which Spalding has accepted all the attention that came with that Grammy - and her performance at last year's Oscars - sits in perfect keeping with how the artist comes across in person too - or down the phone line before a show in Oakland, California, at least.
"Well I don't have as many off days as I seem to have something going on all the time," she says, laughing, when asked how much her life has changed over the past few years.
"But I think the music really speaks for itself. There are other layers going on, with people talking about you or giving you attention. I can get attention or no attention but as long as I'm doing music, it doesn't matter what else is happening. I am just concerned with the art-making and that's the music."
Her inspiration, Spalding says, comes from many sources. There's the music her mother listened to back in Portland, Oregon, that surrounded her formative years, and then there are those she has collaborated with over the years since music became her life, among them Pat Metheny and Stevie Wonder. There were also moments, very early on, that left a lasting impression.
"I think it's pretty much a universal experience, that first time we are exposed to something that becomes a passion, or something we make into a profession or a life," says Spalding, who's about to visit our shores with her band as part of the 2013 Hong Kong Arts Festival.