McBride Plans For Monumental Year

By I Feb. 26, 2009

In 2009, 36-year-old bassist Christian McBride will make new strides on a variety of artistic fronts. He will issue his debut album for Mack Avenue Records, Kind of Brown, on June 16. The album features his new acoustic quintet Inside Straight, with pianist Eric Reed, vibraphonist Warren Wolf, alto saxophonist Steve Wilson and drummer Carl Allen. The album-his seventh as a leader-was recorded at the Fantasy Studio in Berkeley, Calif., in September 2008.

McBride’s new quintet was formed in June 2007 as a result of the bassist playing the Village Vanguard in New York for the first time in 10 years. While the group played material from McBride’s earlier albums, the chemistry was right for future endeavors, including an appearance at the Monterey Jazz Festival in September 2008 shortly before the recording. “When we played at the Vanguard, everyone raved about the show,” says McBride. “I had no intention of forming a future working band, but people kept telling me that the group had to be documented.”

While the quintet was courted by various labels, McBride decided to hook up with Mack Avenue. “I was not interested in signing an old, classic recording contract,” he said. “But Mack Avenue made it clear that it was not only excited about me joining its family of artists, but also wanted to give me the freedom to be creative and explore new models of distribution, which would be beneficial to both parties.”

Kind of Brown will not only be released on CD and digitally, but it will also be released on vinyl and high-resolution 24-bit 96KHz digital downloads.

The new quintet, which has only played at the Vanguard, Monterey and Brazil for one show, will begin touring in the U.S. in May.

In addition to Kind of Brown, in February, McBride will be launching his yearlong “Conversations With Christian” project that encompasses 20 duet performances with a myriad of fellow artists complemented by a special one-on-one interview. The “conversations” will be available online at McBride’s web site, and the music will be offered as digital downloads available on an ongoing basis throughout the year, with a Mack Avenue CD compiling all the sessions to be released late in 2009. At present, McBride has conversed and performed with an impressive roll call of artists such as George Duke, Chick Corea, Roy Hargrove, Angelique Kidjo, Ron Blake, Eddie Palmieri, Russell Malone, Regina Carter, Dr. Billy Taylor and Hank Jones. Other artists expected to participate in the genre-bending conversation-duet project include Sting, Diana Krall, Bruce Hornsby and Gina Gershon.

The duet project started a few years ago as an outgrowth of the biweekly “Harlem Speaks” interviews McBride instituted at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. McBride says that the idea of making a recording of duets in addition to conducting interviews appealed to him the most: “I decided to enlist people who I admired and cared about,” he says. “I wanted to work closely with those people.” The first “converse and play” session took place with Duke on a tune McBride wrote, “McDukey Blues” (“Whooh, that was a lot of fun, but it was also like getting my butt kicked all day long by this great musician,” McBride says with a laugh), and an early session took place with Palmieri on the tune “Guajira y Tumbao” that the duo co-wrote (“Eddie came in with a sketch and told me to put something in this hole he left open for me,” McBride says).

This spring McBride will rejoin the Chick Corea/John McLaughlin Five Peace Band (also featuring saxophonist Kenny Garrett and either drummer Vinnie Colaiuta or Brian Blade). The super group toured Europe last fall and will be performing in the U.S. this year.

In the late summer and early fall, McBride plans to set up a New York big band residency. While the project is still in the planning stages, it will no doubt find the bassist/bandleader stretching the musical envelope as he had done throughout his career.

Other highlights from the past year include McBride’s civil rights-inspired large ensemble piece, “The Movement Revisited” (premiered at the Disney Hall in Los Angeles), and his involvement as a teacher/facilitator at the Monterey Jazz Festival’s springtime New Generation Festival and the Summer Jazz Camp.