Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love Aretha Franklin, Edith Piaf, Blondie.
I am insubordinate by nature. I can't help it.
Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.
It's weird sometimes to have people not see me or see what I do.
My name means 'hope' in Spanish and it's a name I want to live up to.
People are more used to seeing men who are masters at an instrument than women.
You don't have to be fearless to do anything, you can be scared out of your mind.
Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.
Genre boundaries are good for marketing but they all but disappear when you're a player.
You can grow up with literally nothing and you don't suffer if you know you're loved and valued.
You can grow up with literally nothing and you don’t suffer if you know you’re loved and valued.
What I'm identifying with is the vision or the idea - whatever was the little nugget that started it.
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.
Whoever you are, if you know what you're doing, you don't want other people to overtake the merit of your art.
When I read, you know, a rough neighborhood of Portland, I'm like - what? - they didn't have kombucha bars there?
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!
Your sanity is harder to get back than money or contacts. You are the magic. You are the art. You can't lose that.
Up-and-coming musicians can easily reach out and find a loving teacher, and that's definitely what happened to me.
When I was a kid, people called me Emily rather than Esperanza, even though my full name is Esperanza Emily Spalding.
The benefit of the radio is, something beyond your realm of knowledge can surprise you, can enter your realm of knowledge.
I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it.
I focused primarily on being an instrumentalist and studying music and on my primary means of expression: composing and playing.
And I feel that it's inevitable that the work that I do will reflect the life that I live. And the life I live feels very diverse.
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.
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’m not gonna sit around and waste my precious divine energy trying to explain and be ashamed of things you think are wrong with me.
I was exposed to many kinds of music including rock and disco, classical and folk, Midtown and Miles Davis, Sly Stone and David Bowie.
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 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.
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.'
The Czech ease has become my saving grace for traveling! Plus,with its light weight and small size, I save thousands of dollars every year in airline fees.
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.
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.
I did grow up in a rough neighborhood in Portland, which is an abstract concept for anybody who's rolled through Portland because now it looks like a TV set, literally.
There's the juiciest music that makes me so happy, music that I need on that deserted island when I'm stranded for the rest of my life, and nobody cares that it's 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.
When people say, "Oh, she plays like a dude," it's usually dudes who are the ones saying it. They're saying, "Oh, she's as good as us." Of course, that's a stupid statement.
I just think music is so intrinsically linked with images in the culture that we live in that youll be hard-pressed to have an experience with the music without a preconceived notion.
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.
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.
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.
There's nothing wrong with struggle. Anytime I look back at a difficult phase of my life and see what grew out of it - the creative survival tactics - I think that the good is way better than the bad.
The music that I make is pretty sincere; it's from my heart and I love it, and what just happened is more people have started to connect with my heart, and I haven't followed some kind of marketing scheme.
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.'
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.
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.
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 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 thats where I practice and write and listen and study.
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.
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.