Brains, beauty ... and a bass

If you've not listened to Esperanza Spalding, you're missing out on a rare treat.
Spalding is a 25-year-old dynamo, maybe the best thing to happen to jazz in a decade or two because she has the star quality missing from so many young players. Eldar and Julian Lage are exciting players, but Spalding is not only a capable player -- she's also a singer capable of making a song her own.

Check out this video of her performing Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed":



We can thank Pat Metheny for this treat: the story goes Esperanza was ready to quit Berklee after spending two semesters lugging her bass around, and switch to a political science major. But Metheny told her not to, pointing out she has the undefinable quality that can make an artist rise above others.

Need more proof? Here she is Jimmy Kimmel's show:





How can jazz be dying when it draws someone so full of life?

Can jazz be saved? Can anything?

There's been a lot of ink spilled in response to a column by Terry Teachout in an early August issue of the Wall Steet Journal titled "Can jazz be saved?"
Teachout's column reviewed statistics collected in a survey by the National Endowment for the Arts, measuring participation in various cultural events and activities. I haven't read the entire column, but one summary notes Teachout reported on the decline in stated attendance at jazz concerts, and the increase in average age of said attendees.
Here's a graf in the NEA's summary of the survey's findings, which show it ain't just jazz that's in dire straits: "Between 1982 and 2008, attendance at performing arts such as classical music, jazz, opera, ballet, musical theater, and dramatic plays has seen double-digit rates of decline."
I don't know how the survey was conducted, but my question is how was or is a jazz concert defined? Sure, it's easy if it's a Pat Metheny or Dave Brubeck show, but did they reach the fans of Modeski, Martin and Wood, or Charlie Hunter? Moving even further from mainstream jazz, we find the definitions getting even more blurred - if yo define jazz as music incorporating improvisation, syncopated or swing rhythms and advanced harmony, then doesn't the Dave Matthews Band fall under the jazz heading?
There are dozens more examples, but the point is jazz is so broadly interwoven in modern music that it's hard to see where the lines of distinction may be.
So let's parse it further: the question is can mainstream jazz or be-bop be saved?
If "saved" means maintain sales quotas, or draw crowds of certain sizes, then no, it most likely can't. Outside of the growing list of has-been singers getting a quick sales bump by doing a collection of songs from the cliche-ridden Great American Songbook (Willie Nelson? Really?), mainstream jazz releases are not goign to ignite Billboard charts.
But there's a lot of excellent, exciting and innovative jazz that's doing very well, thank you very much. And if we really open our ears, we'll find jazz living and thriving under many rocks ... including rock.
So, save your worries for Bach and Beethoven, and add Brubeck if you want. I think art will survive because it is fine art.

But don't write off jazz yet -- like an adaptable virus, jazz has a way of permeating all kinds of hosts. Many people have been infected and don't even know it ...