Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Jimmy Macbride is among the 25 artists DownBeat thinks will help shape jazz in the decades to come.
(Photo: Yuki Tei)Considering the environment in which he was raised, it’s not terribly surprising that Jimmy Macbride was creating rhythms as early as age 3. His mother, a visual artist, and his father, who was a composer, noticed the precocious child’s interests. “When I was very young, I started playing on some pots and pans at home,” Macbride said via videoconference. “My parents recognized, ‘Hey, I think Jimmy has some interest in percussion. So, maybe we can find a teacher for him.’”
They did find an instructor for the toddler, setting him on a path that would lead to a degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Carl Allen, Kenny Washington and other jazz titans. Nowadays, Macbride is an in-demand collaborator.
“When someone calls me for who I am as an artist, that is certainly the greatest compliment,” Macbride said. “When I look at the musicians that I admire and I aspire to be like, that’s the common thread: They can seemingly be in any kind of situation or any musical kind of group, and still, you always know that it’s them. They always sound like themselves.”
Macbride’s versatility is illustrated by his discography of more than 40 titles, including recent recordings by trombonist Nick Finzer, guitarists Nir Felder and Alex Goodman, pianists Eldar Djangirov and Manuel Valera, and saxophonists Roxy Coss and Troy Roberts.
Although he has not recorded a leader date yet, Macbride played a couple of 2019 shows at Smalls in New York, focusing on his own compositions. For the Dec. 4 show, he assembled a quartet with tenor saxophonist Ron Blake, pianist Shai Maestro and bassist Joshua Crumbly.
“It was great to see how everyone’s different personalities contributed to something that was mine—that I had conceived of,” Macbride said. “It was very exciting and rewarding.”
Many bandleaders who have hired Macbride could say the same thing. DB
This story originally was published in the November 2020 issue of DownBeat. Subscribe here.
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
“The first recording I owned with Brazilian music on it was Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer,” says Renee Rosnes. “And then I just started to go down the rabbit hole.”
Jan 16, 2025 2:02 PM
In her four-decade career, Renee Rosnes has been recognized as a singular voice, both as a jazz composer and a…
“If you don’t keep learning, your mind slows down,” Coleman says. “Use it or lose it.”
Jan 28, 2025 11:38 AM
PolyTropos/Of Many Turns — the title for Steve Coleman’s latest recording on Pi and his 33rd album overall —…
