<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Among those who dominate the prickly jazz world, 26-year-old bassist Esperanza Spalding is as rare as a four-leaf clover. And not just for her signature nimbus hairstyle. Or because she performs barefoot\u2014&amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s more comfortable,&amp;quot; she says\u2014or for enlisting Q-Tip to produce the follow-up to her 2010 fusion-jazz album, Chamber Music Society, which sent shock waves through Charlie Parker faithfuls for its Brazilian influences, fresh rhythms, and instant accessibility. It&amp;#039;s also for where Spalding\u2014friends call her &amp;quot;Espy&amp;quot;\u2014has chosen to live: Austin, a city that&amp;#039;s just as delightfully odd as, well, a shoeless twentysomething headlining Carnegie Hall. But asked if she&amp;#039;s recognized during grocery store outings or bike rides through her Travis Heights neighborhood, she just laughs and says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m still a jazz musician.&amp;quot;   If there&amp;#039;s ever been a time for Top 40 outliers, this is it\u2014alt-rock Canadians Arcade Fire stunned the Twitterati by winning the Grammy for Album of the Year over radio pets Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Eminem. That same night, wearing a chartreuse gown, custom-made by a friend of a friend, Brooklyn designer Selma Karaca, Spalding beat out Justin Bieber for Best New Artist. Now, as she embarks on a world tour, she and her once-sleepy genre have grabbed the spotlight\u2014in tandem with the city in which she dwells.  &amp;quot;Austin reminds me of Portland [Oregon], my hometown,&amp;quot; she says, where she grew up in a low-income area with her older brother and mom, who home-schooled her children and enrolled the five-year-old Spalding in a free community band program. &amp;quot;What I like about both cities is that you have this incredibly diverse mix of people and political personalities, and yet everybody lives so peacefully together.&amp;quot; At the South Congress District&amp;#039;s happening Hotel Saint Cecilia, she&amp;#039;s fixated on Amsterdam design team Droog&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;85 Lamps&amp;quot; chandelier hanging in the bar. &amp;quot;That,&amp;quot; she says, pointing to its bare bulbs and exposed wires, a graceful mix of low-tech and slick, &amp;quot;is soooo Austin.&amp;quot;  Not so long ago, an iconic light fixture like this might have been soooo New York, Milan, or Paris, but certainly not so this small liberal bastion in the red South, home to University of Texas, the state capital, and, since it was the mise-en-sc\u00E8ne for the generation-defining &amp;#039;90s film Slacker, also considered the capital for the going-nowhere-slowly Gen-X set. Like a drab cactus that blasts out an unlikely hot pink flower, Austin has blossomed. A W opened last year, there are two Apple stores, and it&amp;#039;s become a CSA and food-truck heaven (Whole Foods sprouted here, in 1980, before we all became Whole Foodies). The music fest SXSW, which began 25 years ago with 700 attendees, had 30,000 fans swarm in this spring for headliners such as Kanye West and Jay-Z. But many locals vacate the city that week, and the favored slogan around town is &amp;quot;Keep Austin Weird.&amp;quot; Just the right balance between glamour and grounded for Spalding. She moved here from Jersey City two years ago (but keeps a West Village pied-\u00E0-terre for work visits and to see her NYC-based musician boyfriend) into a garden-level duplex in the bobo-inhabited 78704 zip code with her best friend, jazz singer Lian Amber. &amp;quot;I go in my little lair, I open the doors to my yard,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;and I just practice.&amp;quot;  Which doesn&amp;#039;t leave much exploring time, so when Spalding finds a hangout she likes, she greets it like a hiker who&amp;#039;s just seen a double rainbow. &amp;quot;This. Place. Is. Incredible,&amp;quot; she stage-whispers while scaling the LBJ Library &amp;amp;amp; Museum&amp;#039;s massive great hall staircase. Above her, the thirty-sixth president&amp;#039;s papers (such as his 1964 &amp;quot;Great Society&amp;quot; speech) are bound in four floors of red books. Outside, picnickers dot the grounds of this prime example of the New Formalism that informs Texas&amp;#039; dalliance with modernist architecture.  When it&amp;#039;s time for dinner, Spalding takes a bar stool at the North Loop&amp;#039;s Foreign &amp;amp;amp; Domestic, a charming 42-seat open-kitchen restaurant, and explains her gravitation toward quirk\u2014you&amp;#039;ll regularly find her at South Congress vintage boutique Feathers\u2014and how it sets her apart from her classical-leaning counterparts. &amp;quot;At my age, virtuosity is not my strength,&amp;quot; she says, despite her 2 A.M. practice sessions. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s storytelling. And I feel more focused here than anywhere else I&amp;#039;ve ever lived.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/travel-food/a11727/home-of-esperanza-spalding/?click=smart&kw=ist&src=smart&mag=ELM&link=-SMT-ELM>