Bass Musician Magazine - SPECIAL August 2014 Female Bassist Issue | Page 106

bit of money saved to support myself, and then take that time
to investigate what the art wants me to do. At some point, that
may become the realization of doing a completely avant-garde
record, I don’t know. But if that’s the truth of that moment, you
have to do it. That’s the beauty and the privilege of being an
artist. It’s sacred……that’s sacred.
Jake: I do see you standing firm as far as your identity as an
artist goes. Is this something you see a lot of, or on the contrary,
not enough of with the artists you meet out there?
Esperanza: That’s an interesting question.
Really what the question should be is, of the
artists that most people hear about, do you see
a lot of that? Artists are everywhere, but maybe
you’ve never heard about them or we’ve never
discovered them, and maybe people reading
this article have never heard about them. I
spend a lot of time in New York, and I spend a
lot of time in Austin, and in both those cities
I can go out any night of the week and see
people who are totally devoted to their craft
and doing their thing, and being themselves
and not caring. Sometimes their famous and
packing the house, and sometimes they’re just
in the corner restaurant. And it goes the other
way too. Many times players are just rehashing
things that have been done a million times.
I see it everywhere. Just the other day I went
and saw some dance works by Alvin Nicolai,
who is an incredible choreographer. He was
born in 1910 and became very influential in
the sixties and seventies in modern dance. I
just wanted to see the works of this guy, and I
can imagine if you or someone in the sixties saw this for the first
time you’d be thinking…what, where did this fool come from?
Where he came from was understanding the mechanisms of
his craft and was totally liberated to do it how he felt it should
be, and how he dreamt it. He was totally revolutionary in the
dance world from that point on. And I’m sitting there watching
this going, damn, this is a brave dude. People must have hated
him, I mean like hating him in the sense of you’re ruining the

music. But he believed in it. I’m
that aren’t aware of some of the
out there, and a lot of those artis
I don’t know if I’m answering t
question.

Jake: Another analogy, in th
Stravinsky’s performance of Th
tells us actually created a riot.

away its classic Shostakovich.
when you mentioned Stravinsk
that time he wrote music for the
state. And he couldn’t help be
would write something in a sty
said, this is good, I’m safe. The
something, trying to appeal to t
hate it and say it was blasphem