Rockin' the Jazz World

— Sandrine Lee

Here are three reasons you need to know jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding:

• She's been making the rounds of the talk show circuit — Leno, Letterman and more — since late last year.
• She's the first jazz musician to get a Best New Artist Grammy nomination in 35 years and she'll perform on the show Sunday, broadcast on CBS.
• She's as charming as she is talented.

With three distinctive albums behind her, Spalding has been collecting kudos from admirers as different as jazz icons Wayne Shorter and Pat Metheny, and President Obama, who invited her to play at the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Concert. A gifted bassist, singer and bandleader at 26, she's been paying her dues for more than a decade.

"The nomination was so unexpected — but cool," gushes Spalding, who will also co-host the Grammy pre-telecast ceremony with singer Bobby McFerrin. "The good news is that somebody said, 'Hey, you're more than just in that adult contemporary jazz niche,' "

Spalding graduated from and now teaches at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and says she still sees herself as a student. "I am not deceived by all the hype and attention I'm getting right now," she says from her Austin home, where she was planting Texas bluebonnets in the garden. "I seriously see myself as a jazz student — and I still know nothing. You know, it takes decades. So all the people I'm blessed to work with are my mentors." These would include once and future bandmates such as Patti Austin, Stanley Clarke, Terri Lyne Carrington and former Berklee teacher Joe Lovano — a master's course indeed.

Raised by a single mother in Portland, Ore., Spalding was a home-schooled prodigy who played violin in the Oregon Chamber Music Society from age 5 to 15, when she became concertmaster. She soon picked up the acoustic bass, a discovery she has famously compared to "waking up one day and realizing you're in love with a co-worker." She recorded two albums with the rock band Noise for Pretend while studying with trumpeter Thara Memory at Portland State University, and also received an on-the-job crash course for two busy years.

"The luxury of being a bassist is that people always need them," she says. "I ended up in a lot of situations where people desperately needed one. I certainly wasn't qualified, but I did my best to prepare, showed up on time, played in tune, kept the time straight, and, if they needed someone again, I'd get called back."