Esperanza Spalding, with percussionist Terri Lyne Carrington, 8 p.m Fri., Oct. 19, at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway, Atlanta, GA 30339; 770-916-2800; www.cobbenergycentre.com/
Esperanza Spalding, who performs Friday at the Cobb Energy Centre, has a sweet, free-swinging voice, magnetic stage presence, formidable chops as a jazz bassist and great hair.
When she won a Best New Artist Grammy last year, it was the first time a jazz musician was given that honor. And while she is without doubt a jazz musician, her abilities and ambitions, like Nat King Cole’s or George Benson’s, are probably unbounded by that genre.
As one of a small handful of singing bass players — rock and roll has plenty but jazz has fewer — she accomplishes the trick of selling a lyric while holding down the rhythm section, which is like being in two places at once.
But Spalding, who turned 28 last Thursday, seems comfortable accomplishing the unlikely and often at a tender age. She absorbed music as a child by eavesdropping on her mother’s guitar lessons. She taught herself the violin, entered high school at 14 and dropped out at 16, experimented with oboe, clarinet and cello before settling on bass, graduated from Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music and was hired at age 20 to become one of the youngest teachers in the school’s history.
In a quick, 15-minute interview, Spalding spoke about her curious career.
On why she isn’t teaching at Berklee any more:
“I realized I had a lot of studying to do. When people were asking questions and I didn’t have the answer, I realized I need some time to dig in my own life.”
On avoiding Berklee’s tendency to turn some students away from music:
“If you really have a passion for the music, nothing’s going to turn you off … Even when I thought about quitting Berklee, I didn’t think about quitting music.”
On competition among musicians:
“Maybe we get inundated with this idea to get good at something, you have to be the best … But the true experience of art has nothing to do with competitiveness. It’s not so you can sound better than that person, but so you can sound as strong as you can sound.”
On the singing bass player she most admires, in a group including Sting, Paul McCartney, Jay Leonhart and Slam Stewart:
“I don’t know. They are all are every different. But I’ve spent time in my life transcribing Slam Stewart … if you just could play some transcriptions of some of his solos, they are like so delicious.”
On why she doesn’t play with a bow (arco), like Stewart:
“I’m not that hip yet.”
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