The universally acclaimed bassist, bandleader, artistic director, and prodigious collaborator joins the podcast to discuss his many ongoing projects, the evolution of jazz education, and how bass players are like baseball catchers.
Today, the Spotlight shines On Christian McBride, a musician, recording artist, prolific composer, arranger, producer, cultural curator, dedicated educator, and mentor.
Christian has been called the hardest-working person in jazz, and based on what I just rattled off, that might be underselling it. From his early days in Philadelphia soaking up the sounds of Philly Soul to sharing stages with legends like Ray Brown and Chick Corea, Christian has become a bridge between jazz’s rich history and its vibrant future.
These days, you’ll find him leading his new band, Ursa Major, hosting NPR’s Jazz Night in America, mentoring the next generation of musicians, and somehow finding time to work on a new big band album featuring twelve different vocalists. He’s also preparing for an upcoming funk tribute show with none other than George Clinton and Savion Glover at NJPAC.
Whether laying down the groove with Inside Straight, his Big Band, or any other celebrated ensemble, Christian brings an irresistible combination of soul, swing, and storytelling to everything he touches. Today, we’ll explore his journey from Philly to the world stage, his passion for record collecting, and why he believes being uncomfortable might be the best way to grow as a musician.
Quick note: this conversation occurred when our baseball teams were still in contention. One had a better outcome than the other, and neither made it all the way…
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Dig Deeper
• Visit Christian McBride at christianmcbride.com
• Listen to Christian McBride on Qobuz, Bandcamp, or your streaming platform of choice
• Follow Christian McBride on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
• NPR’s Jazz Night in America
• Tribute to Funk! - NJPAC
• Christian McBride On Ray Brown’s Bass And James Brown’s Appeal
• Christian McBride, Revered in Jazz, Is Playing the Long Game
• The curious mind—and hard work—of bassist Christian McBride
• Christian McBride and Sting - “Consider Me Gone”
• History of CBS Records 30th Street Studio NYC
• Kris Davis: defining jazz’s vanguard - Spotlight On Podcast
• Jazz House Kids | School For Jazz - Montclair, NJ
• Ron Carter, jazz’s most prolific bassist
• Nikki Giovanni
• Javon Jackson gives Peter Bradley’s art a swinging soundtrack - Spotlight On Podcast
• Jane Ira Bloom & Mark Helias - Spotlight On Podcast
• Frank Sinatra on Top of the Heap: Revisiting ‘Sinatra at the Sands’
• Questlove and Christian Mcbride - Norah Jones is Playing Along Podcast
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(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
LP: Maestro, how are you?
Christian McBride: Doing well, thank you.
LP: How are you feeling about your Phillies?
Christian McBride: I'm a little nervous. The Mets are pretty hot right now. They've been hot since the All-Star break. I think if we can get by the Mets, we're home free. I'm not worried about the Dodgers. That could come back to bite me, but I think the Mets are the hottest out of the Final Four right now.
LP: It's crazy. If somebody had told you that three or four months ago, you would have laughed them out of the room.
Christian McBride: That's why baseball is so awesome. In a six-month season, you never know what's going to happen.
LP: Should we make some picks here?
Christian McBride: I'm a diehard Phillies fan, everybody knows, so hopefully by the time people hear this, my Phillies will have avenged their 2009 World Series loss against the Yankees.
LP: Well, this is setting us up for a bad dynamic, my friend, because I was going to say Phillies-Yankees, and I'm going to go for the two-fer.
Christian McBride: There you go.
LP: It's exciting, though. It's fun to have your teams matter, to your point. Did you play as a kid?
Christian McBride: Not baseball. I played a lot of street football, and I played softball as an adult, but I spent most of my time either playing the bass or street football up until about my sophomore year of high school.
LP: You got to protect those hands.
Christian McBride: Exactly. And then I started boxing.
LP: Were you any good? Were you afraid to get hit?
Christian McBride: I just took boxing lessons and trained. I actually never fought people. It was just to stay in shape, which obviously I don't do anymore. I've got to get back in the groove.
LP: I don't like getting punched. I think I'd have an aversion to getting hit.
Christian McBride: I mean, that's the mission—to hit and not be hit.
LP: Are there any lofty analogies we could draw between a baseball manager and a band leader? You know, assembling the roster, getting the people in the right positions?
Christian McBride: There are all kinds of parallels you could draw between being a manager in baseball or even a player on the team. I always like to say that the bass player is the catcher because the catcher is the only player on the field that has the full view of the diamond and has control of what's going on.
Maybe not so much since the pitch clock came into effect, but the catcher calls all the pitches. He gets to call the infield, outfield position, has to throw the runner out if they're stealing second, have to block the plate if they're coming home—well, actually can't do that anymore either.
The catcher is very much in control, the navigator of what goes on on the field, and that's the same thing with a bass player. Drummers will argue that it's them, but drummers can only direct from a rhythm standpoint. Bass players can direct from both a rhythmic and harmonic standpoint.
LP: It's really interesting you go there, because as a listener or somebody just wading into the dynamics of a band, I would have always thought it was the drummer as well, but I've heard so many other, especially lead instruments, say they lock in with the bass, they listen for the bass.
Christian McBride: The bass can do both things. Drums can only do one thing, but bass supplies the rhythm and the harmony. I think if the bass player drops out, even with an awesome drummer, there's going to be a very large dynamic that's missing. Whereas if the drums lay out, you might get a lot of energy that's gone, but the song won't fall apart—if you have a good bass player, that is.
LP: You ever think about any of those big rock gigs? Like, I think about Darryl Jones playing with the Rolling Stones. Ever think like, man, I wouldn't mind getting that phone call?
Christian McBride: Not really. I had Sting's gig for a long time. That was good enough.
LP: Yeah, he's got a knack for putting together good bands.
Christian McBride: Yes, he does. He's never been intimidated by hiring musicians that will challenge him. He understands that that's what will keep him being the great musician that he is.
LP: I want to ask you about your record collection, specifically because you bought a record from me once.
Christian McBride: Oh no kidding!
LP: On Discogs.
Christian McBride: Oh, Live in Newport, New York?
LP: Yeah, it was a Live at Newport box set. Tell me about that affliction. Were you always a collector, or is that something you came into as you sort of made your way in life?
Christian McBride: Well, I don't think it was an affliction for anyone born before 1990. Anybody who was listening to music in the seventies and eighties, this is what we know. Even when the CD era came around, I never got rid of my vinyl. I love vinyl. I love the way it sounds. I love the process of putting it on and reading the liner notes and reading the credits and all of that stuff.
LP: I'm on my second or third version of my collection because I had my collection from the seventies up until the early 2000s and I got rid of most of my records. I kept like a box of fifty of them because it was turning into too much of an accumulation. It wasn't curated. I started basically all over again and for a good fifteen years or so, I had rules about what I would allow to come into the collection. I've since gone off the rails, but yeah, because I find that if I don't, it's going to be like your buddy Questlove. Like I'm going to have another house with records in it.
LP: What are some of the ones you go back to? Like, do you have a set of go-tos?
Christian McBride: Not particularly. I have so many here. I try to just randomly put on what's close and just enjoy the process. I do go back to a lot of the Columbia records from the late fifties throughout the sixties. They just sound so incredible. The 30th Street Recording Studio, the Columbia Recording Studios, everything that was made in there just sounds so absolutely incredible. Those Al Davis records, those Thelonious Monk records, Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, and even Simon and Garfunkel—something about those Columbia records from the fifties and sixties, the sound is awesome.
LP: I caught your Village Vanguard shows in 2014 with Inside Straight.
Christian McBride: Oh wow.
LP: And when you put that out on vinyl, it was just a couple years ago, right?
Christian McBride: Yeah. The Trio record came out in 2021, I believe, and the Inside Straight one came out in 2023, something like that.
LP: Yeah, it feels like a new arrival in my collection. That record, and talking to some other artists—I had the pianist Kris Davis here earlier in the year, and one of her last records was live from the Vanguard.
Christian McBride: Love Kris.
LP: And it's really incredible the way that room sounds. Obviously, there are so many phenomenally classic records, but it's got such a—like there's nowhere to hide. It's got such a dry sound, but it just translates so well to record.
Christian McBride: Yes, it does.
LP: Given just the diversity of settings that you find yourself in and the diversity of work you do, is there a Christian McBride bucket list? Like is there a genre combination or an ensemble or what aspirations are left for you in terms of the work you'd like to do?
Christian McBride: My aspirations aren't really that much concerning my bucket list. It's serving the bucket list of these young musicians coming up on the scene. I've already had a chance to play with pretty much everyone I've ever dreamt of playing with.
They're all gone now. All your Freddie Hubbards, your Wayne Shorters, your Joe Hendersons, your McCoy Tyners, your Bobby Hutchersons. I got to spend twenty-six years with Chick Corea. So I'm not interested in living out any more of my dreams. I've lived them. I played with James Brown. What else could I want?
So my goal now is to assemble and nurture these younger musicians coming up on the scene. That means people like members of my new group, Ursa Major. That means people who are on my label, like Jennifer Hartwig and Dan Wilson, the group East Axis. I want to help boost the profile of other musicians now.
LP: What stimulates that for you? Like, what's that about? Is it just taking your place in the tradition, because it is such a part of the jazz tradition, but what pulls you towards that work?
Christian McBride: It's organic. Like I said, there's really not much left in terms of my dreams and in terms of, oh, there's somebody that I haven't played with that I want to play with, not really. So the next natural thing to do is you look at all these younger musicians coming up and say, "Hey, I need to get with them."
LP: Do you think about composition differently when you're working with a younger crew? Like, are you trying to stump them? Are you trying to push them?
Christian McBride: Well, composition and pushing them might be two different things, but the goal is simply to give them opportunities, wherever that may be. In one of my groups, putting together some kind of group that plays a festival, like I did at Newport with the Newport at 70 all-star band, which was full of younger musicians. There are a number of ways that you can help younger musicians out. That's what my main goal is right now.
LP: Do you perceive, or do you recognize any kind of tension or disconnect between what I would say in air quotes is like "the academy," the more formal education, and then the musicians that are out working day in day out? Because I hear from a lot of cats that oftentimes they have to unlearn things in young players that they learned in school.
Christian McBride: There's tension in all of that because even before you had jazz education in a set form, in a true university sort of platform, if you went to go play with Art Blakey's band and you go to play with Miles Davis's band, you're not going to play in Miles Davis's band what you learned at Art Blakey's band.
So the idea that somehow learning what you learn in school is going to help you in the real world—that depends on the player. It's not the school's fault that you took them too literally. They are there to teach you the basic ABCs of what you need to learn as tools to help you create your own sound.
The school is not responsible for helping you create your own sound. That's up to you. So, I have no issues with what happens in jazz education. But also, if you're a young musician going to these schools, it would do you well to actually look at what the school offers, who are the teachers there, what do they teach, how do they teach, and then you go and deal with what they offer you.
If you want to be more of a free player, maybe more of a jazz adjacent slash fusion player, you probably don't want to go to Juilliard. But if you want to learn how to swing and learn some history, learn the sort of basic history of the music, that might be where you want to go. If you want to get into some real abstract sort—and what's the phrase? Some of these phrases are so cliche—you might want to go to New School, you might want to go to Berklee. If you want to play in a real tip-top big band, you might want to go to UNT. You've got to be careful where you go.
LP: It seems like there are many more choices today than there were a generation or two ago because a lot of programs maybe were just starting to have jazz studies or didn't offer improvisation or were actually hostile to their students improvising.
Christian McBride: Which is why there have been more and more universities, and maybe not just universities, but you have a place like Jazz House Kids, which me and my wife run here in Montclair, New Jersey, or the Berkeley Jazz Center in Berkeley, California, Jazz St. Louis, which kind of serves all different types of communities and ages.
For so many years, jazz fought for legitimacy. And when I say legitimacy, it's like there's a larger group of people that got music out to people. They sort of shapeshifted what people took seriously. And jazz was never part of that conversation up until maybe the 1960s.
And so now we fought for that legitimacy to be taught as America's true indigenous art form. And now that it's being taught, it's going through stages. The first stage was, jazz needs to be taught in school. This is serious music. People need to understand how serious this music is. Okay, you fight for it to become a part of a basic American curriculum. That has happened, for the most part.
Then it became an issue of, what are they teaching? And then we got past that and said, oh, well, who are the people who are teaching? Then we got past that. So now you have a lot of jazz programs where you have the musicians who played on records that we love doing the teaching.
But also now have a number of younger musicians or maybe not so younger musicians who say, it's school, that's not the real organic way of learning. You've got people who didn't even go to jazz school saying, all you cats sound the same, you were trained the same, which is not true at all. There just seems to be a very cynical eye toward the institutionalization of jazz, like, well, this is supposed to be folk music.
Yes, it is folk music, but somebody has to teach it to them. Especially if we're in a climate where you find less and less jazz played as folk music. And it's not because of schools, it's because the playing opportunities have become less and less for musicians who want to get out there on the road, playing with older cats. Because they're all teaching in school, because the market dried up for them, and they had to go teach in school. So some of these complaints are displaced, I believe. You can't have it both ways. It's up to the individual to find what they need to be able to find how they express themselves artistically.
LP: Your point about some of the attitudes or the behaviors around education, what was coming up for me as you were saying some of that was, especially in the music school, like, yes, you have to learn the technique. You have to learn the canon, the songbook, the tradition. It's up to you to transcend that or to integrate that into your personality. And it's a long process. Like you have to, you can't really shortcut it. You have a John Coltrane who was playing intensely passionate, pure, raw emotion, but had decades of running scales and studying and going to other cultures for inspiration. He didn't just pick up the horn and say, I'm going to blow free.
Christian McBride: That's right.
LP: Let's say you were dropped into, you know, you're the Dean of Music somewhere and they're asking you to revisit the jazz curriculum. Is there something sort of like unexpected or unorthodox that you would love to see made part of the jazz curriculum that students got exposed to?
Christian McBride: For me as a musician, as a person, you learn the most when you're uncomfortable. I would make students play on a song that they didn't know. We would hold an open jam session, I would call a song, I'd be like, "Hey, come play the song." "I don't know it." "Well, you're going to learn it." I would make them play in time signatures that they're not comfortable with.
I would make them play songs in keys that they never play yet. Because that's the only way you learn. You spend your time learning things at a slow pace or at your own pace, and then you take what you learn and you apply it to whatever situation you're in. But I've always found when I'm exposed, when I don't quite know what I'm doing, when I have to dig deep and go like, "Uh oh, I don't really know what I'm doing," I feel like sometimes failure is a really great thing. Sometimes. Within reason.
LP: Is what you're describing, was that the role traditionally of like the blowing session or the jam session, you know, even when I think about the loft scene and people living in their studio spaces, was the idea of like playing so much, not working off a piece of sheet music on a stand, but you're actually, you're just going to play and you're going to learn the standards, you're going to learn the songbook you're going to learn the changes, but nobody's going to sit down and show you, you're going to, we're just going to do it.
Christian McBride: It depends. There were certainly instances where there were jam sessions where that was the case. Maybe other times not so much, but all of those musicians that came from the swing era, they never had schools. What they did was they sat under the feet of someone who became a mentor to them.
Like Sonny Rollins had people like Coleman Hawkins he could go hang out with. Johnny Griffin could go hang out with Ben Webster. Barry Harris could go hang out with Thelonious Monk. Mentorship and apprenticeship was a real big part of a lot of history before schools came around. You still had that sort of apprenticeship, mentorship, but you had to pay tuition for that.
Which is cool because your mentor gets paid, which is not a bad thing. I was fortunate enough that the mentor that I did pay for at Juilliard, Homer Minch, he was a classical bassist, so I learned a lot from him, but I was fortunate enough that Ray Brown liked the way I played. And he chose me, he was kind of like, "You know, I like you kid, you're going to be my guy." I was able to have Ray Brown as a mentor without paying him.
But, the flip side was being around Ray Brown, it wasn't a controlled atmosphere where we got one hour for a lesson and, "Hey, I want you to practice this and come back and practice and play it for me the way I told you." It was like in a professional setting, "Come on, kid, let's do this."
Now, even if I had gone to school for jazz, I'm sure what I learned in school may not have applied to what I learned from Ray Brown. That's what I'm saying, younger musicians or anybody who might complain or who is cynical of the educational process, it's up to you, it's up to the student, the musician.
LP: Did you ever come to learn or know what Ray Brown saw in you or liked in your playing?
Christian McBride: Probably that I tried to play like him. That's actually not true, because I think before I met Ray Brown, I was a Ron Carter man. I mean, I'm still a Ron Carter man—who isn't? We all love Ron Carter. Ron Carter and Paul Chambers were my two main guys. And I would say Ray Brown was a very close third. It was like 1, 2, 3. Those are my three main people. But once I met Ray and got to know Ray and be around him so often, he quickly went to number one.
Ray saw an era where jazz, particularly bass playing, became more about chops, melodicism, extended technique, as we call it. And I think people like Ray, Al McKibbon, Milt Hinton, a lot of those old school players, they thought, "Man, all these upright bass players got all these chops. They're playing way up on the fingerboard. It's impressive, but nobody's playing with, nobody's got any guts anymore. Nobody's walking that hard 4/4 swinging bass line anymore."
So I think Ray liked the fact that, not just me, but people like Robert Hurst, Reginald Veal, Seanette Moffitt, Ben Wolfe—we were sort of throwbacks because we got great joy in simply playing time.
LP: Where'd that come from for you? Was it growing up and listening to funk?
Christian McBride: Yeah, that's the quick, easy answer. Yes. Anybody who grew up listening to funk, R&B, soul—my father was playing with Mongo Santamaria. As impressive as it was to see bass players with chops, you quickly learn at a young age that's not why people call you for a gig. They call you to play the bass line. They call you to nail the floor down with the drummer. You're a carpenter.
LP: You're the engine room.
Christian McBride: That's right. You're the engine room or the boiler room.
LP: Do me a favor, if you don't mind, for the benefit of listeners. Will you explain the term extended technique?
Christian McBride: Sure. When you are taking bass lessons, they teach you very basic elementary things like hand position, where to put your right hand, where to put your left hand, what fingers you use to play certain scales, how to use the bow, different pizzicato methods.
I'm talking combined, if you are taking both jazz and classical lessons, certain repertoire that you have to learn. What would be called extended technique is things that are past the back of book, so to speak—pull offs, false harmonics, you're learning how to, like you see certain musicians learn how to play with three fingers, the flamenco technique.
That's not a standard bass method. People like Renaud Garcia-Fons play like that, you see Stanley Clarke playing like that. That's not something that you learn in the book, they're not going to teach you that in the book. So that's what you mean by extended technique, sort of the flashy stuff.
LP: Are people inventing new extended technique or is that part of the folk element, like a master or your peers will teach you that?
Christian McBride: I think there's people creating new extended technique all the time. I see some bass players now, they got so much chops, man, it's just like, I can't keep up anymore. I see electric bass players, like for example, I would say from the mid-seventies through the nineties maybe, or at least for a good twenty, twenty-five year stretch, slapping and popping had become so standard on the electric bass, it was almost strange to hear someone just play real basic fingerstyle anymore.
And then you had somebody like Pino Palladino come around, who started making records with D'Angelo, and started playing with The Who, and he didn't do all that popping and slapping, and it was awesome because those records, particularly records with D'Angelo, became so popular. It was sort of like this back to the future moment, like all these electric bass players were like, "Wow, we forgot how good the electric bass sounds just playing with the fingers and not the thumb."
But in the middle of all that, you had—I remember watching Matthew Garrison playing with John McLaughlin and his, he was so fast, I thought, you can't play like that just with fingers. And I watched him play and he was doing like this flamenco technique. I was like, "Oh man, look at that." Well, I'm not going to try that.
LP: I've been looking at your upcoming schedule and man, you're packed between now and the end of the year and well into next year. And I want to talk a little bit about some of the diverse projects you're working on, but, is Ursa Major like your main outlet right now?
Christian McBride: Yes. Ursa Major has been my main touring unit. For certainly all of this year, we started playing together in 2022 and we had a nice run in 2023, but that's mainly the group I've been playing with. Certainly all this year. And as you said, for pretty much the rest of this year, and we're going to record in January. And hopefully have a new album out by the end of 2025.
LP: How do you view that project in terms of lineup? Are they your Jazz Messengers? Do you see this as something that will evolve over decades or, is it going to be the school of Christian?
Christian McBride: I don't know, someone suggested that's probably what it will be, but I didn't have anything specific in mind other than, I get these musical itches, and I feel like I need to scratch them all, and all of a sudden, I had all of these sort of theme bands, and I wanted a band that was not a theme band. I just wanted a band that could do anything, everything, all things.
And so I had been keeping my antenna up for a very long time. I started toying with this combination, not these particular players, in my brain, I was calling them auditions. And so I would say as far back as 2017, 2018, I started jamming with some younger musicians with the intention of eventually putting a band together. After a couple of years of jamming with a bunch of younger musicians, it turned out this group with Nicole Glover and Eli Perlman, Mike King, Savannah Harris turned out to be the band.
LP: I asked you the question about what Ray Brown saw in you. What do you look for? What do you look for when you're putting your superhero team together?
Christian McBride: When I started putting this particular band together, I just kept my eye out for, or my ears open rather, for younger musicians that had a certain energy. I don't think I'm looking for anything specific. I mean, there's a certain language, there's a certain vocabulary that you know works for your ideas.
And when I heard—well, Savannah was probably the most important one because as a bass player, first, you got to build your band around your drummer. Every band I've ever had, the first question is who's going to be the drummer? A whole lot of things go into that, like what's their sound like? What's their drum sound like? What's the setup that they use? Is it an 18-inch bass drum? Is it a 20-inch bass drum? Is it too high? Is it too low? Is it too ringy? Is it too dead?
So I pay attention to how drummers tune their drums, but depending on the sound of the band, that sound can vary. With the New Jawn, the way Nasheed Waits plays, that might not be the drummer that I would pick for Ursa Major, and vice versa. And so, knowing that I wanted Ursa Major, or the band that became known as Ursa Major, I wanted a band that was sort of what I call a hybrid band.
A band that could go in and out, acoustic, electric. Free, funk, swinging, whatever it is, I like to be able to turn on a dime to do a lot of different things. I need a drum sound that kind of fits all of those things without it being aesthetically incorrect. And Savannah, the way she tunes her drums, they fit all of those things. And most importantly, her feel is amazing. So the first time we played together, and I think you know within four bars—the first time we played together, I called some song, and it was a song of mine called "The Wizard of Montero," which is a fast tempo swing song. And I mean, as soon as we started playing time together within four bars, I thought, we're good.
We are totally good. Because I had to make no adjustments to play with her. Tempo felt so nice and comfortable. So there was that. On keyboards, I felt like I needed someone who I found like a lot of modernists don't necessarily know the language of Art Tatum and Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. But they sure know a lot of Robert Glasper, they know any of these young cats coming up right now. So, Brad Mehldau, somebody like that.
So Eli Perlman was a student of mine at Aspen for the Aspen summer program and he just blew me away. I mean, his time is really incredible. His technique, his ideas, he can get around the guitar with such fluidity, and he's a total sweetheart. That always helps when you're not full of drama. And Nicole's been one of the hottest saxophone players in jazz for the last few years. She was an easy call, I heard her play and you just hear all that fire coming out of her horn. I thought, okay, this is going to be my group of superheroes.
LP: I'm pretty sure that's the band I saw about two years ago or so here in Seattle, but I don't think it was billed as Ursa Major, but it sounded, I'm pretty sure that's the lineup I saw.
Christian McBride: Yeah, we didn't have a name back then.
LP: Yeah, I saw you at Jazz Alley.
Christian McBride: Yeah, that's the band you saw.
LP: If you don't mind, tell me a little bit about some of these upcoming shows you've got. So I'm really intrigued by the Nikki Giovanni project.
Christian McBride: Kind of don't know. Nikki Giovanni and Javon Jackson have been working together for quite some time. And I think they've done many projects where they've had a drummer, where they've not had a drummer, where they've had piano, not had piano. I did something with them two years ago, which was, I think we had a full rhythm section, but it was only for two songs. And so, that's a good question. I should text Javon and figure out exactly what we're doing.
LP: Such a tone. His tone is unparalleled, really. Beautiful.
Christian McBride: Javon's a wonderful, wonderful player, and I get to play behind the poet legend herself, Nikki Giovanni, that's gonna be a great night. We actually did a virtual performance together over YouTube during the pandemic. That was a little awkward because there's that time lag, not YouTube, it was over Zoom, which got broadcast over YouTube. And I'm glad it was sort of like a free form thing.
LP: Maybe a year and a half, two years ago, I had Jane Ira Bloom on and she and Mark Helias and Bobby Previte made a record during the pandemic where they were each in a different place and they improvised together. I don't think they used Zoom. I think they used some purpose-built collaboration software.
Christian McBride: Right. The pianist Dan Tepfer was working on a platform that would make a communication with no latency, so musicians could do exactly that. I don't know if that was the platform that they used. When you're in a dire situation, or if you're in a situation where you need to come up with something, it's amazing what the human brain can think of, what ingenuity can create.
LP: I would love to hear a little bit about the big band show with the three vocalists. I mean, it's almost unfair that you're going to have those three people all tied up at the same time, because who else is going to get to use those voices? But you know, what powerhouse lineup? Dianne Reeves, Philip Bailey, good God, and Lisa Fischer. We talk about superheroes. That is impressive.
Christian McBride: Well, this is actually a concert that is previewing my next big band album, which I'm in the process of completing right now, we're almost across the finish line. So it's twelve singers, twelve songs, twelve singers. Obviously, there's not going to be any opportunities where I would use all twelve on a gig. So this performance in November at NJPAC, I was fortunate to be able to get Philip, Lisa, and Dianne.
We've done that before. We did it at NJPAC a few times in the past, like one time I had Dianne, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Jeffrey Osborne, another time we had Philip Bailey and José James and Jazzmeia Horn. So all three of those singers have sung with my band at some point, but I've never had the combination of those three. So it's gonna be a hot night.
LP: That's gonna be beautiful. I can't wait. Yeah, that's something else. Tell me about the Tribute to Funk show. What's that all about? What's the program?
Christian McBride: Yeah, so Ray Chew, who is one of the great musical directors in the world, he is the musical director on Dancing with the Stars, and he used to be the MD of Showtime at the Apollo, is the musical director for this funk night at NJPAC. I saw that Savion Glover's on it, George Clinton is on it.
LP: The document I saw didn't have the lineup, it just said tribute to funk, with a big exclamation point.
Christian McBride: Well, the star of the show that night will definitely be George Clinton. Like I said, Ray is the musical director. When I saw Ray in LA a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him, I said, "Hey, what are we doing for this funk night?" And he just said, "Have I got a surprise for you?"
LP: You think it's Bootsy?
Christian McBride: No, no, no. Bootsy is not performing live anymore. Bootsy's had some health challenges, so he'll make a personal appearance, he just won't play.
LP: I saw Bootsy one night years ago at Manhattan Center and it was his band and Bernie was keyboards, Paul Shaffer was the other keyboard player, but it was a scorching show, man.
Christian McBride: I'm sure.
LP: Before I let you go, I want to ask you a question. I hope you'll indulge me in some of the silliness of this question, but in your role as artistic director at Newport. If you could sort of transcend space and time and you could pick from everybody, the whole pantheon, give me your three night headliners.
Christian McBride: That's too hard. If I could go back in space and time and pick anyone from any era, well, you know, me, one of those three nights would certainly be James Brown would be a closer, I think, Sinatra with the Basie band would be a closer of a night.
LP: Oh, yes.
Christian McBride: And Miles Davis on the third night.
LP: Which band? Come on, you can't just say Miles Davis.
Christian McBride: Sure, I'm saying Miles Davis.
LP: I'll tell you, I'll take any chance to talk about that first Reprise record of Sinatra-Basie, along with "Pennies from Heaven" and "Please Be Kind." Few things in life are better than that record.
Christian McBride: You know, when I first started spending time around Ray Brown, I was on a major quest to learn standards, and it was confusing because I didn't know where to turn. You talk to, if you talk to ten musicians about learning the ultimate version of "My Funny Valentine," which one should you learn? You'll get ten different answers. Everyone I was listening to generally would recommend another instrumentalist—listen to the Charlie Parker version, listen to the Miles Davis version, listen to the Dexter Gordon version.
Hanging around Ray Brown, he really put me in focus because he said, you need to listen to vocalists. With vocalists, you're going to learn the storyline of the song. You're going to learn what the song actually means. And he said specifically with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole. Those three, he said they always respected what the composer wrote, meaning that they're not going to over embellish the melody where you don't know what the melody actually is.
And with Frank Sinatra, I asked him, where should I start, and he said, get any of the records he made with the Basie band.
LP: That's phenomenal. Yeah. That's phenomenal. That was one of my gateway drugs into the music was that first album.
Christian McBride: Sure.
LP: And when they unearth and put out Sinatra at the Sands, that's just stunning, man.
Christian McBride: Do you have the box? You know, there was a Sinatra box set. I think it was called Sinatra in Vegas. They put an entire alternate version of Sinatra at The Sands on that CD box.
LP: What? What is this?
Christian McBride: You can hear an entirely different version of Sinatra at The Sands on that box set.
LP: I don't know how I missed. Wow. Do you know if it's out on vinyl?
Christian McBride: I don't think it ever came out on vinyl. But don't quote me on that. You should look that up.
LP: I'm gonna look. Yeah, when we hang up, that's what I'm gonna go do. Thank you so much for spending time with me and for chatting about this stuff. I didn't want to ask you to do the, you know, tell me your whole life story, especially after the session you did with Quest. It was like, you've done that, you've been there, and I really appreciate you having a slightly different conversation with me.
Christian McBride: Hey man, my pleasure.
LP: All right, have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you in the World Series.
Christian McBride: There you go!
GRAMMY Winning Bassist
McBride is renowned as both a globally esteemed artist and one of the most respected and influential advocates and educators in jazz. He’s been awarded eight GRAMMY® Awards, garnered acclaim for his poignant ode to the Civil Rights era, The Movement Revisited, and performed at the White House. He leads several acclaimed and diverse ensembles, including the Christian McBride Big Band, the scintillating quintet Inside Straight, and the adventurous New Jawn.
McBride’s most recent album Prime exemplifies jazz greats at the zenith of their powers who insist on scaling greater heights, and received praise from The New York Times, NPR’s World Cafe, Forbes, Jazziz, and many more. In 2023 Christian also performed on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Series, released the track “Why Am I Treated So Bad” with Norah Jones and Questlove, and performed on Saturday Night Live with Billie Eilish. McBride also received acclaim at the 2024 GRAMMY Awards for producing Nicole Zuraitis’ album How Love Begins, which won in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category.
Beyond his own work he’s a tireless champion for jazz’s continued relevance through his work as Artistic Director of the Newport Jazz Festival, host of the NPR radio program Jazz Night in America, Artistic Director of the music education organizations Jazz House Kids and Jazz Aspen, Artistic Advisor for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and its TD James Moody Jazz Festival, and Associate Artistic Director for the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
He is a living example of the torch-passing tradition of jazz, having worked … Read More
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