Esperanza Spalding Quotes

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Esperanza Spalding

Profession : Musician

Birth : October 18, 1984

Your sanity is harder to get back than money or contacts. You are the magic. You are the art. You can't lose that.

Esperanza Spalding

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

Esperanza Spalding

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.

Esperanza Spalding

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.

Esperanza Spalding

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.'

Esperanza Spalding

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

Esperanza Spalding

You don't have to be fearless to do anything; you can be scared out of your mind. I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a 'jazz musician' - it's a big responsibility.

Esperanza Spalding

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

Esperanza Spalding

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.

Esperanza Spalding

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.

Esperanza Spalding

There's a guy I used to pay to work with me who'd call me 'kiddo.' I said, 'There's nothing that justifies you expressing that to me, your boss.'

Esperanza Spalding

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.

Esperanza Spalding

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!

Esperanza Spalding

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.

Esperanza Spalding

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.

Esperanza Spalding

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

Esperanza 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.

Esperanza Spalding

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

Esperanza Spalding

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.

Esperanza Spalding

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

Esperanza Spalding