ESPERANZA SPALDING

For what I can imagine and feel and think and hear, I can hardly do anything on the acoustic bass. It used to be just pure frustration of imagining so much more and being able to get to a certain level of execution.

If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.

I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it.

Genre boundaries are good for marketing but they all but disappear when you're a player.

I think there's so much negative influence on children in school settings. It becomes learning by rote to pass a test. It's not contextualized.

The benefit of the radio is, something beyond your realm of knowledge can surprise you, can enter your realm of knowledge.

There's enough time in the day: If you go to bed at 10 and start your day at 6, there's a lot you can do in a day!

There is an assumption that if you're young and pretty, you will get all these opportunities that are way beyond your musical foundation.

I grew up with an incredibly loving and supportive family that gave me the impression there were a lot of options for me out there.

I write at the piano, so I write things that fit comfortably under my hands, and I'm not thinking in terms of any specific compositional methods. I'm just seeking sounds.

Anything I do has to have integrity, so if you just want to make music, it's not difficult finding support. The hard part for a publicist or manager is making a star.

On nights that I'm feeling a need to stretch personally and artistically, I tend to put together outfits that are very quirky, mismatched and over-the-top eclectic.

I just think music is so intrinsically linked with images in the culture that we live in that you'll be hard-pressed to have an experience with the music without a preconceived notion.

Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.

You can grow up with literally nothing and you don't suffer if you know you're loved and valued.

I never think my music isn't easy until I got to teach it to other people.

I like to read, and I like dance. I don't dance, but I like to see other people dance.

It's a pity that if someone who has a really profoundly potent art to share chooses not to or doesn't fit into this very thin slice of what's desirable and marketable, chances are the public will never get a chance to hear what they're doing.

I don't watch TV, I don't spend time on the Internet, and I don't party much. I don't text very much, either.

My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at the piano and transcribe the songs I heard on the radio. I'd change little things in the music and write different lyrics.

I love people, and I love to be with people and to make music with people, but my natural state is to revert back to being by myself in my house, which is cool because that's where I practice and write and listen and study.

I focused primarily on being an instrumentalist and studying music and on my primary means of expression: composing and playing.

If you're a writer, and you write fiction, that's not all you read.

I just want to say, if you're going crazy, take a break. I felt overwhelmed by stuff that wasn't satisfying me, things I was supposed to do for my career. I stopped and said, 'Let me get back to the basics.'

When something in art or music piques my interest, I tend to go check it out, and most things I check out, I'm not very good at. But a few things I've gone to check out have given me back as much love as I gave them, usually much more.