{"id":9105,"date":"2010-08-17T06:00:52","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/page1\/?p=155"},"modified":"2010-08-17T06:00:52","modified_gmt":"2010-08-17T11:00:52","slug":"esperanza-then-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/esperanza-then-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Esperanza Spalding – Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It was Sunday, September 2nd, 2006 and we were\u00a0in Chicago on Labor Day weekend.\u00a0Leafing through\u00a0an entertainment newspaper that morning, we saw that\u00a0Donald Harrison and his band\u00a0were scheduled to\u00a0perform at the Chicago Jazz Festival that afternoon, so we\u00a0made plans and went down to check\u00a0them out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After an\u00a0opening\u00a0song, Harrison,\u00a0dressed in a white linen suit, introduced the band in that unmistakeable New Orleans accent of his. The drummer was John Lamkin, the pianist was Dan Kauffman and\u00a0Christian Scott, Harrison’s nephew, was on trumpet. When he got to the bassplayer, who was this young woman with an exploding mane of hair, there was a substantial increase in applause–and whistles. The bassplayer was Esperanza Spalding. Harrison noted that she\u00a0played in\u00a0Scott’s band, but was sitting in with his band for the occasion. He also said, “You’re going to hear big things from her in the future. So remember that name.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

I had a feeling that he was right, and everything she’s done since has only confirmed this intuition.\u00a0What’s as amazing as Esperanza’s many talents, as bassist, composer, producer and all, is that she does not allow the\u00a0hype, which many times gets downright silly, nor the very real\u00a0milestones she’s achieved, to\u00a0cloud her vision and progress as an artist. <\/p>\n

There are folk twice her age who might not be able to handle\u00a0the historic\u00a0opportunity to perfom twice\u00a0for a history-making President at the White House, and then again, at his Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony in Norway. But\u00a0Esperanza has kept her eyes on her own prize\u00a0and her latest recording, Chamber Music Society<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>, is further proof of this fact.<\/p>\n

I had the opportunity to meet Esperanza in February 2009\u00a0and she is as\u00a0warm a person as she is talented. It’s been beautiful to watch her grace in handling\u00a0her ascencion since that Chicago afternoon in August of ’06. \u00a0<\/p>\n

If jazz has ever needed an “ambassador”, and that’s subject to debate, it could not have a better one for these times than\u00a0this lovely,\u00a0insanely-talented and inspiring\u00a0young woman from Portland, Oregon.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was Sunday, September 2nd, 2006 and we were\u00a0in Chicago on Labor Day weekend.\u00a0Leafing through\u00a0an entertainment newspaper that morning, we saw that\u00a0Donald Harrison and his band\u00a0were scheduled to\u00a0perform at the Chicago Jazz Festival that afternoon, so we\u00a0made plans and went down to check\u00a0them out.\u00a0 After an\u00a0opening\u00a0song, Harrison,\u00a0dressed in a white linen suit, introduced the band […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,1],"tags":[67,68,69,64,65],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-05-11 02:05:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejazzpage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}