CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE

“Walking in Rhythm,” the ’70s soul-disco classic from Donald Byrd’s The Blackbyrds, was one of the first songs Christian McBride heard as a child on the Philly radio dial, a sound space and central hub of black culture. It was an enthralling tune for the young McBride, who had yet to realize his own musical calling. It’s a most poetic foreshadowing. Like Byrd, a forward-thinking visionary, McBride’s artistic wingspan is boundless. His fluidity and capacity to encompass all dimensions of his musical predilections with authenticity and ingenuity are rare achievements.

Since then, Christian McBride has blazed an extraordinary trail as one of the most preeminent musicians of his time. Over the last three decades, the 9x GRAMMY® winner and Newport Jazz Festival Artistic Director has made momentous advances as a dynamic musician and recording artist, a prolific composer-arranger-producer, a distinguished curator of culture, and a dedicated educator and mentor. A proliferate bandleader, McBride’s ensembles are each distinctive extensions of his tremendous threshold of creative inspiration, which span and synthesize straight-ahead, experimental, free-leaning jazz, funk, soul, Latin, hip hop and rhythm and blues. His celebrated groups — Inside Straight, The Christian McBride Big Band, The Christian McBride Trio, Christian McBride’s New Jawn, and A Christian McBride Situation — have not only enjoyed consistent high praise and critical acclaim, but they have also emphasized his role as an early presenter of rising stars, like pianist Christian Sands, vibraphonist Warren Wolf, and drummer Ulysses Owens Jr.

In 2020, McBride was nominated by the Recording Academy twice in the same category — Best Jazz Instrumental Album — for RoundAgain, a stunning reunion project featuring an all-star band with Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, and Brian Blade; and Trilogy 2, a remarkable live double-album featuring Blade and the late legend, Chick Corea, that chronicles several years of the trio’s vibrant synergy. For McBride, that particular bond began over 25 years ago, when Corea was featured on his sophomore album, Number Two Express (1995), performing his classic, “Tones for Joan’s Bones,” a watershed moment for any young musician. The same year, McBride released his oratory masterwork, The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons — a five-part suite dedicated to the lives and legacies of civil rights giants Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and Muhammad Ali. A creative pinnacle for McBride two decades in the making, the seminal piece features his 17-piece GRAMMY-winning big band and an all-star roster of poets, vocalists, and actors.

Beyond donning several hats as a musician and bandleader, McBride is also a well-established fixture in radio as host of NPR’s public radio program, Jazz Night in America, and The Lowdown: Conversations with Christian on Sirius XM.

McBride is an entire artist whose colossal sound, strikingly vast body of work, and huge strides within the realm of artistic directorship are denotative of a self-identified perpetual student, whose love of learning feeds his passion, and whose passion has led a generation of musicians — within jazz and beyond. Singular in his torch-bearing role, he takes none of it for granted.

“My career is no longer for the benefit of just me.”

From the beginning, McBride was primed for the multidimensional success — and responsibility — he has acquired, with mentorship and a deep sense of community serving as the central pillars of his professional path. The principal preceptors in his life established well-laid groundwork as it relates to what it means to be a part of genuine musical comradeship, the seeking and implementation of wisdom, and what it looks like to pay it all forward.

For McBride, his point of departure is the musical indoctrination of Philly Soul. His mother, an impassioned audiophile and educator; his father, a talented bassist who most notably played with Cuban percussion legend Mongo Santamaria; his uncle, a prominent radio promotions insider; and his great uncle, also a bassist — each played profound roles in the development of McBride’s insatiable eagerness in his own musical aspirations. The sounds of producers Gamble & Huff and Thom Bell, as well as the catalogues from the Stax, Motown, and Atlantic labels, enveloped his psyche at a time when Black music and culture were steadily becoming mainstream, global influences. Black radio and television were increasingly significant, Soul Train was a nationally syndicated hit, and its theme “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia),” by Philadelphia International Records house band MFSB, served as a major example of the city’s creative and cultural gravity.

McBride experienced a childhood acutely reflective of these events and phenomena, spending significant time in the back stages of live concert venues with his soul-steeped family. Through the cultural tutelage of his uncle, McBride would find himself having up-close and personal experiences with a panorama of musicians, from The Isley Brothers to Dizzy Gillespie, before he reached middle school. His discovery of his idol, James Brown, at ten years old — the year he received his first bass — served to further tighten the bond between nephew and uncle, and would prove to have had a fated undercurrent in the years that would follow.

After attending The Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), an arts magnet school in South Philadelphia whose alumni also includes Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots, Joey DeFrancesco, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, McBride moved to New York City in 1989. The turn of the decade would usher in a class of up-and-coming talents who, over the course of the 1990s, would prove to be essential to the decade’s hallmarks and an extension of one of the most vibrant eras in jazz since the 1960s. From the time McBride entered the halls of The Juilliard School, he was already on the radar of musicians like future mentor Wynton Marsalis, as well as Terence Blanchard, Joe Henderson, and Hank Jones.

Another musician who had his ears set on McBride was alto saxophonist and former Jazz Messenger Bobby Watson, who welcomed McBride to New York City by offering what would be his debut gig. By 1990, McBride was touring regularly with the likes of Watson, Freddie Hubbard, and Benny Golson, as well as fellow rising stars like Roy Hargrove, which allowed for consistently holistic musical adventures. Foremost within a cohort of young musicians who would have a most unique opportunity to work alongside wish list-worthy jazz originators and craftspeople, McBride became a bridge between the music he found inspirational to his development and the vast, burgeoning sounds of his generation.

That same year, McBride would get one of several calls of a lifetime from bass legend Ray Brown, a dynamic and soulful architect of the double bass, principal in the overall evolution of the rhythm section. Their relationship would manifest through both mentorship and collaboration, with Super Bass, a brilliant concept project featuring McBride, Brown, and luminary bassist John Clayton. Between his own recordings for Verve and his special collaborative projects, McBride was arguably poised to become the busiest sideman of his generation, working alongside Milt Jackson, George Duke, J. J. Johnson, Hank Jones, and McCoy Tyner.

Toward the latter part of the decade, after curating a series of master classes at Berklee, McBride accepted the position of Artistic Director at the University of Richmond. By the turn of the 2000s, he was at the creative helm of the jazz programs at Richmond, Jazz Aspen, and The Brubeck Institute. McBride’s artistic acumen and talent for cultivating meaningful programming and performances opened a superabundance of doors, and he continued to widen his capacity to serve an almost unfathomable number of roles.

In the mid 00’s, McBride would make tremendous breakthroughs as a paramount leader in jazz ambassadorship and cultural curation, guiding some of the most premiere programs in the world. In 2004, musician and historian Loren Schoenberg implored McBride to come onboard as co-executive director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. A tremendous venture, and the most significant cultural position he held up to that time, through acts of community-building and partnering and curating, McBride assisted in building Harlem’s first-of-its-kind jazz museum from the ground up, while helping to reconnect one of jazz music’s most vital artistic hubs to its vibrant citizenry.

The following year, he would assist as an advisory board member and artistic director in building out Jazz House Kids, a leading community arts organization based in Montclair, New Jersey founded by his wife, vocalist Melissa Walker. Soon after, McBride would receive yet another trajectory-setting opportunity, this time taking on the role of Creative Chair for Jazz at the LA Philharmonic in 2006, curating twelve concerts per season between the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall. Established as a two-year term position, McBride welcomed the opportunity, and during his first summer as creative chair, presented his musical hero, James Brown.