Apart from his duties as one of the most prominent jazz bassists working today, McBride seemingly does it all (with the Grammys to show for it): broadcasting his long-running series "Jazz Night in America," curating festivals, working as an educator, and playing with a whirlwind mix of who’s who and who’s new. The maestro and his band arrive for a three-day residency from Thursday-Saturday, March 14-16.
These performances catch him at the crossroads of recent output and a new release, the beautifully intense Prime and the soulful new-grass counterpoint of But Who's Gonna Play the Melody with fellow bassist Edgar Meyer.
Which leaves the question, “What are we going to hear when he’s here?” A phone call later …
Christian McBride: The record with Edgar, it’s funny, the president of Mack Avenue Records [where we released] it, called me to tell me it has received the most amount of pre-orders since your Conversations With Christian album. He’s excited and so am I. I think so many people are so curious about an album with two bass players who don’t play the same kind of music. Like, "What’s going on?!?” Sounds like people are really excited about this.
Orlando Weekly: We're excited, knowing your sound and Meyer's — more on the classical and bluegrass side — but like you he stays busy working with a wide array of artists.
He's another person who has a lot of different projects going on. He’s got his thing with Bela Fleck, and his thing with Zakir Hussein, or he’s debuting some orchestral work somewhere. We both knock around playing a lot of stuff.
One of the two tracks available on Bandcamp, “Barnyard Disturbance," has these great bluesy melodies floating around like two different wind currents moving the same leaf around. One is Meyer and the other is you.
That is not inaccurate. (laughs) Thank you.
Are we going to hear some of this during your stay?
No. When I come to Orlando I’m bringing my current band: Nicole Glover, Ely Perlman, Mike King and Savannah Harris. Not a totally new band but we still have that “new car smell” and my first all-millennial band. Neither material from my latest releases.
We've been following all of those players for awhile, all of them are dynamite.
What we will be playing will be a whole different thing. I’m going to be releasing a 7" of this band soon, on my label Brother Mister. So what’s the music like … that’s such a broad question because people hear music so differently. If I give references it can tie the listeners with what to expect.
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