📍King, Portland, OR 97211, USA
1984 – 2002“Esperanza Spalding was born in Portland, Oregon, in October 1984, and grew up in the King neighbourhood of north-east Portland, part of the historic Albina district, the heart of the city's Black community. Her mother raised her and her brother alone, and money was tight. The neighbourhood was then troubled by drug dealing, gang violence and abandoned houses, and Esperanza has described it as pretty scary, but her mother gave her a world of music and ideas at home. At four she watched the cellist Yo-Yo Ma on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and became fascinated by stringed instruments; too small for a cello, she taught herself the violin. A sickly child with juvenile arthritis, she was home-schooled for much of elementary school, and she sat in on her mother's community college music classes, coming home to copy on the piano what she had heard. By five she had a place in the youth programme of the Chamber Music Society of Oregon, and she stayed for ten years, becoming concertmaster of the youth orchestra at fifteen. That same year she discovered the upright bass, and fell in love with its sound. She left high school, earned a GED, and studied music at Portland State University before winning a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where at twenty she became one of its youngest teachers. In 2011 she won the Grammy for best new artist, the first jazz musician to do so, and she has since won several more Grammys and taught at Harvard. Portland is proud of the girl from the King neighbourhood who taught herself the violin.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today