Photo by Johann Sauty

There’s something to be said for the natural evolution of all art forms. You can’t necessarily control people paying attention to (or not paying attention to) a certain idiom. Sometimes that’s OK – sometimes we need that so we can grow into the next thing.

All the arguments I make on behalf of jazz music needing to open up and allow itself to evolve past these archaic forms of expressing the music, I’ve often assumed were actually part of classical music’s tradition of holding on to the classics. However, as I’ve been reading letters, comments and editorials from some of the composers that I most look up to – Stravinsky, Wagner – their sentiments seem to be, “No, we need to let go of the past, we have to write the music that’s relative to the moment and we can’t get caught up in being obsessed with the way one person did it and trying to continually emulate and recreate it.”

The push and pull between the extremes of wanting to preserve the traditions and also wanting to look forward is healthy for the classical and jazz worlds at large. Young artists will always say, “No, we need to break the rules and move past the tradition!” But we need to have something to push against. We need to have someone who has worked to keep the traditions alive, so we can study them and then push against them, of course. Both are equally important.

Classical music’s “classics” are always going to be played because people are always going to want to hear them when they buy season tickets to the symphony. Now, the demographic of people who love classical music is certainly changing, but it’s been changing for hundreds of years. Radio and cinema and all these new options of ways the community can go and experience art are changing.

Not that classical music is all of a sudden going to become obsolete, but it’s not at the top of the list of what townsfolk or people in a major city would do on a Friday and Saturday night. What we have to remember about the music is that it really is a live art. Going to see a symphony – it’s really a live experience. Most people don’t take time in their daily or weekly lives to go see live music. Maybe the biggest concern, the biggest issue facing the success or the continuation of a classical music performance, is people’s willingness to go out and support it – live.

I always encourage people to go out and see live classical music. I try to make time for myself to go see that music whether it’s orchestral symphony performance or whatever. It’s one of those things that is really hard to explain and justify to someone if they haven’t it experienced it – young or old.

Some people don’t enjoy going to hear a symphony, a chamber ensemble or a jazz ensemble, for that matter. All I would say is give yourself a chance. I’m only hard on people who decide that classical music is stuffy or that they don’t like it but haven’t given it a chance by going out to hear anything.

The musical age we live in is incredible. Sometimes, I don’t think musicians realize or appreciate the freedom that we have. We live in a democracy where we’re not only free to express ourselves the way that we choose in music, but we can also often find funding and support for pursuing an artistic goal simply on the grounds that we want to.

Someone can say, “I’ve been studying for 12 years and I have this crazy idea that I want to go out and sample street signs in the suburbs of Chicago and then I want to transcribe them and orchestrate it for two bassoons, an old lady that lives down the street and her cat and six violins – and please give me $10,000 to record this and document it.” And they can often find funding. I feel like the music of the United States is alive and kicking. Anybody who thinks it’s not is just missing out.

Esperanza Spalding’s third album, Chamber Music Society, was released by Heads Up this past August. Her next album, Radio Music Society which focuses on more urban elements of jazz, will be released next spring.