Kathy just hung up the phone with Ezperanza Spalding, a young jazz artist whose name you will hear often soon. Tomorrow is going to be a big day for Spalding: her debut album hits stores and she heads to Switzerland for a week of gigs. "I'll probably be too jet-lagged to celebrate, and I'll be doing a show. I'll play a song to celebrate!" the bubbly 23-year-old said of the CD release tomorrow. Despite the fact that she's something of a musical prodigy (she played violin, clarinet and oboe starting at age 5 and now focuses on the bass and singing) and has played with some of today's jazz greats (Patti Austin, Michael Camilo), Spalding has a remarkably cool attitude about it all. She said she didn't want to make a straight jazz album, because she's influenced by and listens to so much else, so she describes it as "rooted in jazz, with a South American background and Afro-American music."

And when she's not playing, she's teaching herself about -- get this -- electrical engineering. I had to ask how she got interested in that, and she said it's because of her interest in sustainable energy. "I said, 'What's the best way to bring cheap, easy energy to people?' and in my quest for that I realized I didn't know much about how energy worked so I wanted to learn about it."  She's actually made one "really simple" (her words, not mine) solar generator and says she can't wait to see what else she can do.