If you ask esperanza spalding what made her decide to pursue music professionally, the answer is simple: she didn’t.
spalding was always into music, taking up the bass as a teenager. She auditioned for a band and started to realize that she could make a living out of this.
“I started doing little random gigs in Portland, and then it started to register like, ‘Oh, this is the thing I can do.’ I felt really resistant honestly to the idea of being a musician only, but kept getting encouraged by adults that I trusted that I should really pursue music,” said spalding. “I wasn’t looking to it as a ‘career’ of maybe the way some people think of a career like that’ll be my stability.”
As she performed, spalding fell comfortably into the genre of jazz. She released her first album “Jujo” in 2006, followed by her self-titled album, “Esperanza,” in 2008. She has released nine studio albums as well as two live albums and has earned a number of Grammy Award nominations and wins, including Best New Artist in 2011 and Best Jazz Vocal Album for her albums “Radio Music Society” in 2013, “12 Little Spells” in 2020, and “Songwrights Apothecary Lab” in 2022.
When it came to developing on her sound as a jazz musician, spalding says she hasn’t landed on one thing in particular.
“We making vibrations. Some people’s coalition in this life and music is to emulate something else that they really love and create like a hybrid of a very exact, replication/hybrid of the sound that they feel most connected to,” said spalding. “In my case, I’m doing what I want to do, what feels true and that I wanna hear. I haven’t landed on anything because I’m changing every day — I’m being changed every day.”
From Feb. 18 through March 2, spalding will be holding a residency at Blue Note in Greenwich Village. Having previously lived in the area, spalding feels that coming to play at Blue Note is like a homecoming of sorts.
“I used to live 5 blocks away, right on Bleecker and 6th Avenue. It feels very familiar and I love the staff there so much. They always treat me so warmly and generously,” said spalding.
For spalding, contributing to New York City’s bustling jazz scene goes beyond just playing for a crowd, it’s speaking to a broader movement that is impacting the United States as a whole.
“The emergence of the music itself was always the shadow trickster of the colonial white supremacist project of forging the United States on the backs of Black and Indigenous people. Music has to be centered in New York because it has to be the counter-voice to the assumptions of what capitalism wants to do all over the planet and what it wants to do to people,” said spalding. “The energy of the music is the trickster on the back of the king going, ‘You don’t know about this, you don’t understand what this is doing.’”
spalding says that preparing for a residency rather than a one-off show in the Blue Note is akin to cooking. As all the flavors simmer together, you can watch it all come together and evolve over the course of the residency.
“I’m not doing anything distinct to prepare, I’m just giddy and excited to feel how with these musicians that I get to be there with for 12 nights, two sets a night, what we’re going to find and create,” said spalding. “I feel like a Blue Note residency also means you invite down everybody and their mama that you know who’s based in New York. It’s like having a sitting room where people can come over for tea and have that conversation you’ve been meaning to have, but you never have enough time to just sit somewhere and talk.”
Tickets for spalding’s residency are available now at www.bluenotejazz.com/nyc.
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