In 2011 the Best New Artist Grammy went not to a marketed pop juggernaut but to a jazz musician holding an upright bass. This episode explores the life of Esperanza Spalding through the lens of strategic constraint, the idea that deliberately removing options and safety nets forces creative adaptation. Born in 1984 in Portland, Oregon and raised by a single mother, she developed juvenile idiopathic arthritis that kept her housebound, and she absorbed music by sitting underneath the piano during her mother's jazz guitar lessons, then reproducing Beethoven by ear at home.

She taught herself violin by age five and became concertmaster of a chamber music society before 16, then got bored, learned a single blues line on the double bass from a band teacher and used it to land a club gig at 15. After dropping out at 16, earning a GED and enrolling ...