Friends Old and New: Artistic Director Christian McBride Previews the 2023 Newport Jazz Festival

We conclude our series of 2023 Newport Jazz Festival pre-event interviews with a conversation with Christian McBride. Fittingly, our third interview with McBride covers his three roles at the Newport Jazz Festival: bass heavyweight, skilled educator, and curator. 

McBride’s bona fides as an artist are beyond reproach. He’s worked with legends of jazz – Gary Bartz, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, and Harold Mabern, among them – as well as those more comfortably removed from that lineage, including James Brown and Queen Latifah. He has eight Grammy Awards to his credit. Going back thirty years, he was still a young bassist who had not yet released his debut as a leader, Gettin’ To It (Verve, 1994). But he was part of an excellent quartet led by Joshua Redman and featuring Brad Mehldau, and Brian Blade, which would go on to record Moodswing (Warner Bros. 1993), one of the best records of its era. Before their album release, they played Newport in the Summer of 1993. Now, three decades later, they reunite – after tours since the pandemic- there as well. Not one to focus solely on the past, McBride will also present his perennially special Jam Jawn group, this time with Bob James, Ravi Coltrane, Nate Smith, Eric Krasno, Negah Santos, and Celisse. We get into both upcoming performances with McBride, along with his lesser-discussed avant-garde work. 

In terms of his role as an educator, McBride has been an ambassador of the music to the general public. He has been the longtime host of NPR’s Jazz Night in America, sharing concerts and stories about the vibrancy of jazz with willing listeners. He’s also hosted and produced SIRIUSXM’s jazz interview series “The Lowdown: Conversations With Christian” and the Newport Jazz Festival’s “Live Wax” Instagram series. He is also actively involved with Jazz House Kids, a renowned community arts organization led by his wife, Melissa Walker. At this summer’s Newport Jazz Festival, McBride will bring skills developed in these experiences to “The Mindful Drummer,” a dialogue with longtime friend and colleague Brian Blade. 

As a curator, McBride has served as the Newport Jazz Festival’s Artistic Director since 2016. Through an artful selection of bookings, he has been able to help produce an event that, this summer, has nearly completely sold out for the entire weekend. Part of McBride’s success has come from his openness, in keeping with the event’s now sixty-nine-year history, to look beyond genre labels to the quality of the music presented. This broad approach, for 2023, has resulted in performances by artists ranging from Angel Bat Dawid and James Brandon Lewis to Anderson .Paak and Big Gigantic. 

In our conversation with McBride, we touch on all of the above and more. 

PostGenre: In the past, you have announced the personnel of your Jam Jawn pretty early on. This year it mostly stayed a secret until the end. Was there a reason you waited this year to announce it?

Christian McBride: Well, it was because I didn’t have everybody confirmed. I had about half of the band confirmed, but I wanted to wait until I had everybody locked in.

PG: Okay. One thing you did confirm pretty early on, however, was that Bob James would be there on piano/keyboard. How did you first meet Bob James?

CM: I played on an album of his back in the mid-90s called Straight Up (Warner Bros., 1996). It was the first acoustic trio record he had made since the ’60s. When I recorded it with him in 1995, it had already been almost thirty years since he made an acoustic trio record. I haven’t played with him since then; another almost thirty years now.

We’ve been in touch and I interviewed him for my Sirius XM show during the pandemic. I’ve always been a huge fan of his playing and also his career.  I have always felt that those of us deep in the jazz world know about Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, and other people who have had very long careers in jazz. Because Bob James has had a long career in a lot of commercial music, I always got the sense that too many people have overlooked him. But he’s always been one of my favorite musicians, from his work with Sarah Vaughan to his work with Quincy Jones to his avant-garde recordings from the 60s, and all of the stuff he’s done for television and with Fourplay. He’s a complete musician.

PG: The most recent New Jawn album [Prime (Mack Avenue, 2023)] seems a little more avant-garde learning than most of your records. Of course, you have collaborated with people like Laurie Anderson and John Zorn in other projects, but this album is a little more “out” than those usually under your name. Given Bob’s background in that type of music, do you think that is something the Jam Jawn may touch on?

CM: Maybe. I mean, especially with Ravi [Coltrane] being there, who knows? We might go to a few different places. And, of course, Nate Smith, played in Dave Holland’s band for quite some time, so he also knows the avant-garde too. So, who knows?

PG: In a more general sense, do you feel that working on Prime may have influenced some of your selections for this year’s Newport Jazz Festival lineup? It seems there may be more avant-garde representation than in other recent years, with Angel Bat Dawid, James Brandon Lewis, and some could argue the Arooj Aftab-Vijay Iyer- Shahzad Ismaily trio fitting in that space. 

CM: I don’t know if there’s any more or less representation of the avant-garde than in past years. I’ve never been good at keeping track of the numbers of who’s doing the avant-garde, who’s doing the straight ahead, or who’s doing the funk. But I like to think that there’s always been some element of what some would call the avant-garde.

The project that Vijay is doing with Arooj, I don’t think that’s going to be too out. The story of James Brandon Lewis has been a big one in jazz over the last year. And Angel Bat came because of something I saw online that she had done. It was so…. The word “shocking” almost comes to mind. I just couldn’t wait to see if she was available to come and do the Festival.

And with my career, over the last decade or so, I’ve worked with people like John Zorn, Craig Taborn, Tyshawn Sorey, Milford Graves, and the trio with Laurie Anderson and Rubin Kodheli. I’ve always felt like when I play with musicians who are sort of not in the mainstream, it’s viewed as my just trying to be diverse. But, no, I really like [more experimental] music, and I’ve been working with musicians who are in it quite a bit. Hopefully, at some point a lot of fans will go, “Oh, he’s actually serious about this.”

PG: As a recent example, you are on one of John Zorn’s Bagatelles [Bagatelle Vol. 13 (Tzadik, 2023)] with Chris Speed and John Irabagon. It is an incredible record.  

CM: Yeah, that was fun, man. I’m glad you heard that.

PG: Going back to Angel Bat Dawid for a moment, in addition to her set with her band, she will also be doing a Hush Harbor Mixtape Service as one of the workshops the Festival is putting on this year. The Newport Jazz Festival has a long history of workshops, but it seems like it has been a long time since the Festival has hosted one. 

CM: Right.

PG: What inspired the decision to resurrect these workshops?

CM: Well, I think we wanted to resurrect them because I can remember playing Newport back in 2007 with Bruce Hornsby and Jack DeJohnette. Around that time, the Festival did a whole series of interviews with many of the musicians playing that summer and they were very interesting.

We figured that now that we have the [Newport Festivals] Foundation, we needed to figure out how to capitalize on having all of these great legendary musicians on site. We wanted to have an element where we could have these musicians interact with some young people and create some content that we can show in schools. It would also allow us to create a historic document for young people in the future to see. That’s where the idea for the workshops was developed.

PG: You are also doing one with Brian Blade called “The Mindful Drummer,” where you will discuss his approach to the drums. How did this particular workshop come together?

CM: Dan Swain, the [Newport Festivals] Foundation’s Director of Education, and I went through a list of artists performing at this year’s Festival. He asked me, “Who on this list do you think would be a good person to do an educational capture with?” That’s always such a broad question because almost any of the artists would be great. 

I saw Brian on the list, and I think that he’s one of the most beloved musicians in the whole world. But Brian doesn’t do many online master classes or other things like that. It’s not really something he does, but I thought that because of my relationship with Brian, he might consider it. And he did. 

PG: You will also perform with Brian at the Festival in the Moodswing Reunion. Is this a one-off engagement? It seemed like the quartet stopped performing last year.

CM: We did a bunch of dates in 2022. We were supposed to do a very long tour at the end of 2020, but obviously, that didn’t happen. Those dates got rescheduled to 2021, and it still didn’t happen because there were still a lot of COVID protocols in many places. Some of those dates just went away, and we wound up having to postpone the tour for the third time and did as many dates as we could in 2022.

When we started putting together this year’s Festival during our tour last year. I asked the fellas, “Look, I know that, theoretically, after this tour is over, we’re going back to our own projects. But would you consider just doing a one-off for Newport? Come on, man, do it for me, bro.” We had a meeting and they said, “Absolutely. We’ll come back for one time.” 

PG: Was it ever a consideration, in booking the Moodswing Reunion,  that this year is also the thirtieth anniversary of the group’s 1993 performance at Newport?

CM: Yeah, absolutely. That’s right.

PG: As you mentioned, you each have gone off and done incredible other work during those thirty years. When you come together now, does it feel like it did thirty years ago? Or because you have all developed, changed, and done other things since, does it feel different when you play together now?

CM: Oh, it’s better now because I think we’re more mature as human beings. Now, we know what the hell we’re doing. [laughing].

PG:  The Moodswing Reunion performance is scheduled for Sunday. Sunday is the day with the most traditional jazz offerings of the weekend. It was also the first day of this year’s Festival to completely sell out of tickets. [Ed. Saturday has since sold out as well, with Friday close behind]. Do you have any thoughts on what the fact Sunday sold out first may say about the Festival or the state of jazz in general?

CM: I was pleasantly surprised when Sunday sold out. It is really interesting what it says about those conversations that we [in the jazz community] often have about where jazz is going, if jazz is dying, where to find the support for jazz…  well, we have a jazz festival for three days and the one featuring more artists that represent most of what we know as traditional jazz is the one that sold out first. It is clear that people still love jazz. People still want to hear jazz. People want to support jazz. When you have a day of Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, Joshua Redman, Charles McPherson, and Samara Joy, and that’s the day that sells out first, that says a lot.

PG: What is interesting too is some older critics have complained there is not enough jazz at the Festival… where exactly are they looking?

CM: I find it interesting because if you go back and look at the Newport Jazz Festival lineup from, say, 35 years ago, you might have someone like George Benson, Steps Ahead, or Michel Camilo. Or Harry Connick Jr., who was just getting started around the time The Jazz Futures played Newport [in 1991]. In those days, there was only one stage, and I think five or six artists throughout the day. The Festival also had BB King and John Lee Hooker. My point is that even if you go back and look at the Newport Jazz Festival in the 80s, I’m very sure there were some jazz critics back then that said, “Newport’s not jazz anymore.”

PG: Very true. And some likely even said something similar back in the 1950s or 1960s when the Festival brought Mahalia Jackson, Muddy Waters, or Chuck Berry. 

CM: Right. So, part of me wonders which Newport Jazz Festivals these critics are remembering that were all completely jazz and that they feel we got away from. Maybe it was the first one, but we’ve had so many Festivals since that one in 1954.

PG: Not to mention that some of the best Newport Jazz recordings are those that are not “jazz.” One example is James Brown at the 1969 Festival.

CM: I mean, I know the entire ’69 Newport Jazz Festival was quite controversial for many reasons.

PG: The big “Rock” year.

CM: Yeah. Even George [Wein] himself said, “Okay, that might have been a bit of a stretch.” But being a big fan of eras and periods and getting a snapshot of what was important in a particular era, I look at that ’69 Newport Festival, and sure, you have Les Zeppelin, Sly and The Family Stone, Frank Zappa, and James Brown. But you also see Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Freddie Hubbard, George Benson, and Dave Brubeck. The Festival never got away from its core. Maybe most of the young people that came that year didn’t care about the core of the Festival, but George sure did.

PG: Related to that, there are two performances scheduled for this year’s Festival that are a bit outside the jazz realm. One is Anderson .Paak doing a DJ set, and the other is Big Gigantic. Coincidentally, both are the closers on the Quad Stage, on Friday and Saturday, respectively. How did those two bookings come together?

CM: As far as Anderson .Paak, I wanted to get him back in 2017. We were trying to find a closer and wanted to get him back then to do it. But he was a little too expensive. 

But I also know how much he is into music and he’s collaborated with a lot of musicians who have been at the Festival. So, I thought that it wasn’t nearly as big a stretch as some would think to try to get Anderson .Paak at the Festival. However, at this point in his career, he’s such a superstar. Especially after he and Bruno Mars won all the Grammys [for An Evening with Silk Sonic (Atlantic/Aftermath, 2021)]. He agreed to come if it was under his DJ alias.

As for Big Gigantic, I played with them back in… actually, I think it was the same year, 2017. I was in Nashville doing a Jazz Night in America episode on the jazz scene in Nashville, and I went down there to play with a bunch of different musicians. [Big Gigantic saxophonist] Dominic [Lalli] invited me and Jennifer Hartswick –  who is also at the Festival on Saturday – to sit in with them. I’d known Dominic for quite some time because he used to play in a band in Colorado called the Motet. I sat in with the Motet about 15 years ago. So, Dominic and I go way back. 

A lot of the bookings for the Festival are built on personal relationships and friendships and the connection that all of these musicians have with each other.

PG: Since you tend to look for people you have either performed with or otherwise know, is there ever a case where you go out and try to find someone that you do not know on a personal level or through connections?

CM: Well, I’m happy to say that there aren’t too many musicians who have ever played at the Festival that I haven’t had some sort of a bond with, at least some half degree of separation.

PG: Circling back to your own performances with the Jam Jawn, the Moodswing Reunion, and being part of the workshop with Brian Blade, is there one of those three about which you are most excited?

CM: Oh, I don’t have a particular one that I’m most excited about. The Jam Jawn is gonna be connecting with new friends and totally being in the moment. Hooking up with Joshua, Brad, and Brian is going to be reconnecting with very old friends. I’m excited about it all.

Catch Christian McBride at the Newport Jazz Festival. At 3:10 PM on Saturday, August 5, 2023, McBride will perform on the Fort Stage with the latest incarnation of his special Jam Jawn group. At 3:10 PM on Sunday, August 6, 2023, McBride will perform on the Fort Stage with Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, and Brian Blade as A Moodswing Reunion. At 12:30 PM on Sunday August 6, 2023, at the Museum Stage (formerly the Storyville Stage), he will also have a conversation with Brian Blade called “The Mindful Drummer”; pre-registration required to attend. More information on the Festival can be found here. We will be providing live coverage of the event. 

You can learn more about McBride on his website.