Esperanza Spalding

I put my mother through a lot when I was a teenager. I used to lie a lot. Now, we talk all the time.

I was exposed to many kinds of music including rock and disco, classical and folk, Midtown and Miles Davis, Sly Stone and David Bowie.

I'm realizing now that I was always really curious about inviting people into a space and sharing information that way. But I didn't have any context for it. It was just fun because I was homeschooled and lonely and bored, and I'd do things to get people to come over.

As you go back or move toward insights/ideas/events/words/lessons/mistakes in the past, you develop into the future from the present. I think that's pretty cool that two quote-unquote opposites are intrinsically linked. That whole theme of opposites being two sides of the same whole is a theme that's always been intriguing to me.

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

I love Aretha Franklin, Edith Piaf, Blondie.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

It's about process, the process of growth. It seems to me in my own life - and other minds throughout history have also observed this phenomenon - that growth seems to move in two directions at the same time.

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.

When I was a kid, people called me Emily rather than Esperanza, even though my full name is Esperanza Emily Spalding.

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