A Bigger Word: A Conversation with Newport Jazz Artistic Director Nate Smith on Why We Need Live Music Now More Than Ever

On September 22, 2025, the Newport Jazz Festival announced Christian McBride would step down from his role as Artistic Director. In a sense, McBride’s departure was perhaps inevitable. As one of the most in-demand bassists in the world, his dedication of so much time and effort to the Festival for nearly a decade was nothing short of incredible. But, in another sense, the resignation signaled a radical change for Newport. Since founding the Festival in 1954, George Wein remained its defining figure for decades. And when it came time to pick a successor for Artistic Director, he personally chose McBride. McBride’s leaving invariably severed a direct line of continuity. However, if the success of the 2026 Festival showed anything, it is that the infrastructure Wein put in place, and which McBride further built upon, is larger than any one person. Nate Smith’s selection to serve a three-year term as Artistic Director underscores how the Festival’s leadership continues to look toward what Newport can still become.

Like McBride before him, Smith is an artist who moved freely across musical boundaries. The fifty-one-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia, native has collaborated with such jazz heavyweights as Dave Holland and Betty Carter. He has mined soul and funk with both Brittany Howard and The Fearless Flyers, explored pop with Paul Simon and James Taylor, and even co-written and co-produced a track on a Michael Jackson album. And he’s formed heavy grooves with Childish Gambino. Those experiences have all directly shaped his own music’s melding of ideas and approaches. The striking “Home Free (for Peter Joe)” on Kinfolk: Postcards from Everywhere (Ropeadope, 2017) even throws string quartets into the mix. Ultimately, Smith’s precise technique and sonic expansiveness have resulted in two Grammy Awards, including one for Best Alternative Jazz Album.

But even with his established pedigree, some of his following has inevitably come from his viral videos. One, from 2018, found him dropping his drumstick during a solo but remaining unfazed and continuing to keep the rhythm going. The attention that this and other videos brought to Smith uniquely positions him as someone both familiar with the tried-and-true sideman apprenticeship model and the more contemporary path of finding a fanbase online. This, in turn, gives him a particularly unusual perspective on not only how musicians build audiences but how a festival can help connect them with one.

To some extent, Smith is still being eased into his role as Artistic Director. Only a few of the bookings for the 2026 Festival were actually his. But that does not mean he is taking his responsibilities lightly. Across all three days of the Festival, he introduced most of the artists to the audience. He also presented his own Quartet set with saxophonist Josh Johnson, keyboardist James Francies, and bassist Michael League. His performance duties even leaked outside Fort Adams’ walls to the Friday night aftershow with Butcher Brown and the Saturday night gala. Then there was the impromptu “Off the Cuff ” set. When Sienna Spiro’s voice failed her, Smith pulled together an incredibly powerful genre-spanning set with Johnson, guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Anna Butterss, organist Sam Fribush, and vocalists Rachael Price, Michael Mayo, Celeste and The Dip’s Tom Eddy.  

What you are about to read is an interview originally scheduled, then rescheduled, then rescheduled again at the Festival. Given the weekend’s hectic pace, it ultimately took place a few weeks after the dust had settled. The delay was actually a blessing in disguise as it allowed Smith more time to breathe. More than anything else, our conversation reveals how forward-thinking he is. Even in reflecting back on the whirlwind he had just been through, he’s primarily mining it not in search of retrospective reflection but for lessons to make the next year even better. 

PostGenre: Now that you have been through your first festival as Artistic Director, what do you feel surprised you the most about the experience?

Nate Smith: The speed of it all. I wanted to introduce as many artists as I could at the Festival. It was very important for me, because I am the new guy, that as many people as possible  saw my face while I was there. Some people have been coming to Newport for years and knew Christian but didn’t really know me. I really wanted to make myself seen. The rush of running from stage to stage, not even able to introduce some of the artists, and then leapfrogging and introducing others made the whole weekend fly by. I blinked and it was over.

And that rush was definitely a new experience for me at Newport. Usually, Newport is so great because you get to really savor it. All your friends and colleagues are there. You get to go see their performances. Hopefully they come and see yours too. Things are much more laid back and there is more camaraderie. But this summer was more of a whirlwind.

PG: And, of course, that is only the days at Fort Adams. There are also the aftershows.

NS: The Saturday night gala was a little unusual this year. Because this was the year that I was introduced as Artistic Director, the protocol was a little different. I also didn’t previously realize how big an event it was during the festival weekend. I had to learn on the spot that night. 

PG: What do you feel you have learned the most from the whole weekend that could carry through to the next couple of years of your directorship?

NS: I think being around and being open to using all of your talents all the time is really the thing. I might have to host something. Or I might have to put together a set, like we had to on Sunday with “Off the Cuff.”

I think I learned the value of having a great community of musicians who are excited to work and to play. That was really cool. I think what makes Newport particularly special is that it does have a familial atmosphere. People, if they can, are ready to jump in to help when they’re called. 

PG: As far as the music community, in some ways the shape of it has changed over the last few years. There used to be a very traditional path of tutelage and sideperson gigs before becoming a bandleader. That still exists to some degree, but what has changed is the number of artists who do not go the traditional route and have their careers take off by going viral. Do you feel you have a unique perspective as someone somewhat in the middle of the two; an artist who took the traditional path with Betty Carter and Dave Holland but had their career skyrocket by going viral online?

NS:  Yeah, I do. Being a part of both paths has taught me a lot about how people connect to music. I think that sometimes something comes along that really captures people’s imagination. For example, Angine de Poitrine. I didn’t book them for Newport myself. [Newport Festivals talent buyer] Hannah Gold was the one who put me on to them. But when I saw them, it made a lot of sense for them to be at the Festival. Not only do they make killing music, but they also have a story that captures people’s imagination. 

And then you have somebody like Michael Mayo who had a viral moment last year and built a whole fan base. He’s used his viral moment to springboard into a career that he was ultimately going to have anyway. But I feel like he’s coming up through a more traditional path too. He’s a working band leader who is playing his shows, building his audience, touring, and he’s putting out records. He’s doing it the way that we’ve all done it.

I think virality is an interesting tool artists can use to help build their audiences. But I think that there’s still no shortcut for getting out and playing in person. So, to button up the question, I feel like I do exist at an interesting place because not only did I have a moment with social media, it happened a little later in my career. I was around forty when I went viral for the first time.

I’ve also played in several genres. I’ve played at the [Newport] Folk Festival too. So, I exist in an interesting kind of intersection of genres. I am a jazz musician at heart, but I’ve played all this other stuff. And that too has given me a very unique perspective on how people connect to music. 

PG: Do you feel that being Artistic Director – a role where you pick other artists to book – is changing your perspective on your work as a bandleader, composer, or collaborator? 

NS: That’s a good question. I don’t know that it changes my core beliefs around the importance of an artist getting out, playing their music, and sharing it with as many people as possible. 

But I do think that being Artistic Director gives me a unique vantage point because it lets me see better how these artists are appealing to the Newport audience. The jazz audience is a diverse audience. And it has a lot of opinions about what is or isn’t jazz. Opinions about what kind of jazz people like and what kind they don’t. I can zoom out and see the things that appeal to the various constituencies of the jazz audience.  And when I tour with my own band, that gives me a perspective in terms of where I fit in that mashup of artists. 

PG: Only a few of the artists for this past Festival were your selections but for those that were, and for your work for 2027 thus far, when selecting artists, are you considering the different subcultures within jazz? For instance, how certain artists are more associated with the avant-garde or others with more straight-ahead music.

NS: No, I’m only thinking about what I like. I’m thinking about what a particular artist is doing and, if I really like it, I can hear where it fits in the Festival. I can certainly hear where an artist is coming from in terms of influences. But that does not guide me much. 

I love Marquis Hill. I love the way he plays. He creates modern jazz, and the current definition of the phrase “modern jazz” changes based on the times. What was modern jazz in 1960 isn’t modern jazz in 2026. Of course, his music is infused with R&B and hip hop. But, ultimately, it’s all incredibly beautiful. I connect with the beauty of what he’s doing. I can say the same thing for someone like Brandon Woody. I connect with the imagination and incredible improvisation that is built into what somebody like SML does too. 

But you have to connect with the music on a personal level first. Only then do you start thinking about “categorizing it.” I honestly don’t think that fans care as much about genre as business people do. People simply like what they like. 

PG: It’s interesting too, because inevitably there are some purists – for pretty much any jazz festival’s lineup, honestly – who complain that the music does not meet some aesthetic standard they have in mind. But, Newport has never been some neotraditionalist-only festival. 

NS: Exactly, man, exactly. I think people who take that view of the Festival take such a narrow view of what they think is straight-ahead jazz. And, to me, it’s like “you didn’t hear Tia Fuller and Shamie [Fuller] Royston play? Did you even go to Billy Hart’s set? Did you even hear Charles Lloyd? They were all there.”

Jazz is a bigger genre. It’s a bigger category. It’s a bigger word. Jazz is a bigger word now than it’s ever been. So, of course there are going to be a lot of splinters. Of course there are going to be a lot of people taking different approaches to the music. Newport has always been aware of that. George Wein booked pop acts at Newport. He booked rhythm and blues acts and soul acts, too. As a businessman, he understood he needed to diversify the audience and sell some tickets. But, even more importantly, he understood that this music, jazz, has spawned so much more music. Whether you realize you’re listening to jazz or not. Whether you are listening to an artist who’s been directly influenced by jazz or not. So often, jazz is at its root. 

I’ll also say this: even when the leader isn’t exactly a jazz artist, some of the musicians who play with them at the Festival are great jazz musicians. Yebba made her Newport debut this year. James Francies is basically her right-hand person and if you want to talk about someone who’s playing modern jazz, he’s at the top of my list. 

The arguments about what is and is not jazz have been around practically forever. And they are always going to be there. I think we still have to first follow our intuition as fans when booking the festival. Whatever excites us, I know people can connect with it too because we’re connecting with it. 

PG: The focus on narrow labels undermines the history of the festival, too. For instance, next year is the seventieth anniversary of Mahalia Jackson’s first performance to a secular audience, at Newport in 1957. No one is claiming the Queen of Gospel is a jazz singer. But that performance is so historically significant. And clinging to some narrowly defined view of what is acceptable at Newport would have denied that opportunity, an essential moment in musical history, for not meeting some rubric.

NS: I mean, come on, man. And you’re going to tell me Mahalia was not as hip as anything else that was at the Festival that summer? That Mahalia Jackson wasn’t just as great and just as swinging? She was incredible. I think she elevated the festival, honestly. I think a lot of the artists who don’t meet some narrow definition do. 

Years ago, when I first started reading up on Newport, it quickly became clear how much history is in the Festival. I feel like George Wein always wanted to present a wide spectrum of music. He called it “Jazz from J to Z.” That was his slogan and, even inside of jazz, he didn’t define it as just one thing. He wasn’t presenting only bebop or only big bands. He was presenting jazz in all of its forms. 

PG: In an interview a little while back, you mentioned how you wanted intergenerational genre-blurring collaborations at Newport. The “Off the Cuff” set definitely seems to have done that. Do you see an ad hoc group like this as just a one-off created by an emergency, or do you feel you will be presenting something similar each summer of your directorship like Christian did with his annual Jam Jawns?

NS: As much as I can, I really just want to put artists in front of audiences who wouldn’t normally see them. One of the proudest moments of my artistic director debut was when Tia Fuller sat in with Vulfpeck. That was huge for me. Not only because I love Tia. Not only because I love Vulf. But because I know that she made some new fans that day. And I also knew she would elevate the music because she’s so great. That was a very cool thing. And it was not that difficult to make it happen either. I just reached out to Jack Stratton and said, “Hey, man, would you be cool if Tia sat in?” and then reached out to Tia and said “Would you be down to do it?” 

I don’t know if something like that can happen at every festival because there are logistics to keep in mind. But those small moments are the kinds of things that I feel really matter. And you never really know how they can benefit both the audience and the artist. 

PG: Those creations of little moments can also be found in your own performances separate from “Off the Cuff.” Back in 2019, your Kinfolk band and several special guests, Kamasi Washington for one, presented the first aftershow for the Jazz Festival in a very long time. And then you did it again when they returned in 2023. Did you ever see that experience as an audition of sorts for the Artistic Director role in case Christian ever left?

NS: You know, that’s a good question. I hadn’t really thought about it when I did them. Now, of course, thinking back, I’ve been tracing my history with the festival. I’ve been thinking about all this stuff. And I think that the [Newport Festival] Foundation’s board may have had an eye on me for longer than I knew. 

One thing I can say for sure from having gone through the process of becoming Artistic Director is that the board has a great poker face, man. I really didn’t know they were going to choose me until they told me. So, it’s hard to speculate whether they were looking at me in those moments as someone who could possibly succeed Christian. 

But one thing I can say for sure is that the people on the Foundation board and the Festival team have always made me feel like I was kind of part of a family – part of a team – from the beginning. And when the aftershows started, I definitely felt a little more of a connection with the casual side of the Newport Jazz Festival. Having been an artist and playing on the stages at the Fort is one thing. But with the aftershows, you get a little more of the flavor of not only the people who are coming into town, but the locals in Newport too. Even as it is one of the top festivals in the world, the Festival is also still a community event. It’s still something that affects the city of Newport and the people of Rhode Island, too. And I got a sense of that from doing those aftershows.

PG: Which also goes back to the sense of community. Your own recordings do too, with the Kinfolk albums especially coming to mind. Do you think that communal aspect is even more important in light of the rise of Artificial Intelligence?

NS: Definitely. I was so nervous during my Grammy acceptance speech that I didn’t even fully understand what I was saying. But what I said at the very end of my speech was that “live music is our last stand.” I think live music will remain one of the few things that AI can’t replicate. And the idea of musicians coming together to play and an audience sharing that experience in real time with us is never going to get old. If anything, I feel like people are going to get thirstier for it. People are going to get hungrier for it. I think musicians are gonna need each other more than ever. But we’re also gonna need our audiences more and more too.

I think that at this point in time, especially at this critical mass with AI, we need to heavily emphasize real humans playing together in real time. Ultimately, those connections are at the essence of jazz. But the great lesson of jazz is how to have those connections in an improvised way. When getting together with musicians you don’t know, we still find ourselves speaking a common language. Maybe we share some common repertoire or similar ideas. The “Off the Cuff” set on Sunday was the prime example of that. It was basically a jam session. But it was a jam session built around the shared language of Black American music. Some of that language is jazz and some of it is an extension of jazz. 

I think that as time goes on, the ideas of musicians being in community, networking with each other, and being open to working together, even when it feels unusual, will become more and more important. 

PG: It will certainly be interesting to see how AI interacts with improvised music. The financial side of improvised and creative music is a whole other discussion; it has pretty much always been a problem. But part of me thinks that perhaps AI may actually help creative artists because they are willing to take risks that algorithms may suggest are inadvisable, and will not replicate, but still connect with humans in a very real way. It seems like those artists who take the safer approach to things – many pop stars, for instance – may be those most threatened. 

NS: I don’t know, man. I do think that more and more human beings are going to want to feel a personal connection with the artists that they love. Social media can provide a little bit. For many, your reach as an artist is going to increasingly depend on people seeing you on socials. If you’re out there as a smaller indie artist and are touring, it is incredibly important for your social media presence to work in tandem with your live music presence. 

But I do think we’re going to get to a point where the fake stuff – bots and AI – will devour social media. And when that happens, people are going to increasingly want to be in a live setting with the artists they love so they can see them with their own eyes and hear them with their own ears. They’re going to want to be in that live space together more than ever. I think AI is going to create more of a hunger for a live music experience. In the meantime, things will kind of suck because musicians, fans, and audience members are all going to have to do our due diligence to determine what’s real and what’s fake. But when all is said and done, the technology will create even more of a hunger for a live music experience. 

PG: And now you have the Festival’s artistic path in your hands for the next few years. One major difference from when Christian was Artistic Director is that your term is limited; it lasts only three years. What do you hope people decades from now will most remember when they look back at the Nate Smith years at Newport?

NS: Oh, that’s a great question, man. And it’s kind of hard for me to answer. But I’ll just take a stab and say that honestly I hope they feel like they discovered a lot of music from my time as Artistic Director. They found two or three artists when they attended during those years and have been following them ever since. To me, that’s a great thing. 

I really hope for the special moments too. Things like Yebba or Layla Hathaway making their debut at Newport. Layla making her debut as a leader was a big deal for me. She has six Grammy Awards. She’s been on so many significant jazz records. Robert Glasper’s records. R&B records. Anderson .Paak. Moonchild. Kendrick Lamar. She’s been on so much that she’s a ubiquitous presence in the music. Yet this summer was her first time at Newport. That’s crazy. That’s big, man. I am incredibly proud that it happened while I was there. And I hope people remember things like that when they look back on my time as Artistic Director. That they will feel like they made a really personal connection with artists at Newport while I was Director and that those relationships just continue onward. 

Stay Tuned For Our Always Continuing Coverage of the Newport Jazz Festival. More information on Nate Smith and on the Festival can be found on their respective websites.

Photo credit: T. Jordan Hill, PostGenre Media