What the World Needs Now: Christian McBride on the 2022 Newport Jazz Festival and the Legacy of George Wein

In many ways, this summer’s edition of the Newport Jazz Festival is similar to years past. It will be held at Fort Adams, the event’s home since 1981. Newport will still serve as a barometer of the state of improvised music, whether by living legends, emerging talent, or those in between. But things are also different. 2022 marks the first time the Festival will proceed in full without its founder, George Wein. Since 1954, the man often heralded as the founder of the modern music festival had missed his most prized event only thrice: in 2004 when recovering from surgery; in 2005 when caring for his terminally ill wife, Joyce; and in 2021 as his health failed him. But each time, Wein still advised and counseled festival management behind the scenes. With his passing last September, the Festival entered a new era. And yet, if our conversation with Artistic Director Christian McBride is any indication, while Wein is no longer with us, he will remain an invaluable part of the Newport tapestry.

In a way, the discussion of this summer’s Newport Jazz Festival begins across the country in sunny Los Angeles. Two days before Newport, McBride will serve as artistic director of another event: The Hollywood Bowl’s Tribute to Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra. During their careers, both Lee and Sinatra straddled the line between popular music and jazz. Appropriately, the evening will visit both sonic spheres by presenting Billie Eilish and Debbie Harry alongside Dianne Reeves and Gretchen Parlato. Some purists may balk at Eilish and Harry’s inclusion at an otherwise jazz-heavy event. But, to McBride, those criticisms fall flat. “Jazz has always suffered from a civil war which does much more damage to our own family than it does to the outside world,” McBride notes. “There’s always been a problem with some people who just can’t seem to enjoy the music. They overanalyze it. Too many people listen with their heads, not their hearts and feet. It keeps people outside the jazz community from joining us; it is better to find common ground. And maybe, in the process, the outsiders will love jazz as well.” One can’t help but notice parallels between McBride’s response to potential Hollywood naysayers and Wein to his critics over the years.

While Newport has boasted some of the greatest stories in jazz history – the resurgence of the careers of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington among them – it has always reached further than “just jazz.” Mahalia Jackson, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, The Kingston Trio, Aretha Franklin, Muddy Waters, Led Zeppelin, Sly and the Family Stone, Frank Zappa, Living Colour, Parliament Funkadelic, Mavis Staples, and, yes, even Sinatra himself, are but a few who have appeared alongside jazz royalty at Newport since the mid-1950s. Often each selection brought some detractors, but such complaints left Wein, like McBride, undeterred. “George had a really good sense of balance when it came to doing what he believed in artistically without ignoring the fact he was also making business decisions,” states McBride. “He loved swing music, especially Lester Young, a young Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, a young Dizzy [Gillespie], Louis Armstrong, and Teddy Wilson. But he didn’t hesitate to serve as many different people as possible, whether booking avant-garde groups or even James Brown.” Today, those influences inexorably extend to one of contemporary music’s most popular forms, hip hop.

Hip hop is hardly a new presence at Newport, with Mos Def, The Roots, and Common appearing at Fort Adams over the years. But the form is omnipresent at this summer’s offering. Jazz rap pioneers Digable Planets will perform at Newport for the first time. Zambian/Australia-based rapper Sampa the Great will fuse sampled beats with electronica, African music, and neo-soul in her Newport debut. Newcomers The Soul Rebels will underscore the direct descendant line from New Orleans brass bands to modern hip hop. The returning Canadian band BADBADNOTGOOD counts among its credits projects with Kendrick Lamar, MF Doom, and Ghostface Killah. And even as Jazz is Dead presents established jazz heroes like Gary Bartz and Henry Franklin, it does so with a nod toward sampling.

A cynic might even call this summer’s Newport Jazz Festival a hip-hop festival. But, as McBride reminds critics, that perspective is an oversimplification: “There’s been a good thirty years of jazz mixing with hip hop… [Y]ou can’t fully tell the story of jazz today while ignoring where it intersects with hip hop.” Seemingly, just as George Wein could not tell the story of jazz in 1959 or 1969 without discussing its interplay with folk music and rock, respectively.

Another inescapable trend one notices in Wein’s tenure at the Newport Jazz Festival is its openness to sounds from around the world, whether the Nigerian drums of Babatunde Olatunji or Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo. The global influences continue in 2022 with not only the presence of Sampa the Great and BADBADNOTGOOD but the debuts of Japanese trumpeter Takuya Kuroda, Bahaman trumpeter Giveton Gelin, and Icelandic vocalist Laufey, as well as the returns of Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo and Mexican drummer Antonio Sanchez. Chilean saxophonist Melissa Aldana, who performed at Newport as recently as last summer with The Jazz Gallery All-Stars, will perform as a leader at the festival for the first time.

There are also several artists from the United Kingdom: Yussef Dayes, Nubya Garcia, Theon Cross, and Shabaka Hutchings. The latter two will each host solo sets as well as congregate as the band, Sons of Kemet. Now in what is likely its final tour, Sons of Kemet brought down the roof at the Quad Stage back in 2019. The heavy London presence is understandable given the booming music scene in the isle as of late. Or, as McBride puts it, “the London scene, along with the LA scene, is one of the two of the hottest things going on in our music right now.” But McBride is also careful to warn audiences that excellent music has been coming from the country for a long time: “The UK has always had a very cool scene. I remember when I first got out of high school, people like Courtney Pine and Steve Williamson were really hot and doing fascinating things.”

McBride’s broad view of acts fit to perform at Newport, regardless of their label or place of origin, is wholly consistent with the lineups of years past. Indeed, it is Wein and McBride’s shared openness towards presenting all music that gave the elder solace in the younger’s selection as his successor several years ago. As McBride recalls, “I think George felt comfortable with naming me artistic director because he knew I was open and could mix all kinds of genres, not only at the festival but at the wild and crazy jam sessions I like to put together.” These jam sessions, whether last year’s Jam Jawn or McBride’s trio with Herbie Hancock and Vinnie Colaiuta in 2019, have become an annual highlight since McBride took over as Artistic Director in 2017.

This summer brings “Newport Jawn,” McBride’s jam session with Chris Potter, Vijay Iyer, Makaya McCraven, Brandee Younger, and Mike Stern that runs jazz’s wide gamut. When asked how the eclectic ensemble came together, McBride notes that its origins primarily lie in the unpredictability of their combined sound: “I don’t know where the group will go musically,” the bassist concedes. “However, that uncertainty is why I am so excited about this performance. Actually, that unpredictability is the whole point of these jam sessions I’ve been doing at Newport. No one knows where it will go. That’s incredibly exciting. Who knows? We may suck,” McBride notes jokingly before adding, “but I seriously doubt it.”

However, even McBride’s successes with impromptu groups are hardly without precedent at Newport. Throughout its early history, jam sessions were the norm. Even as far back as the inaugural event, one finds a meeting of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Oscar Peterson, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, and others. Given their history, it is fitting that this summer’s festival should close with an all-star jam session honoring George Wein. And it seems almost everyone wants to be a part of this set. “To be honest, it was not very hard to find musicians who wanted to be a part of [the] tribute”, states McBride. “So many [musicians] wanted to be a part of it. And, I’m sure there will be some other musicians hanging around the fort who want to join us,” he continues.

A good starting place for selecting who would partake in this memorable performance seemed to lie in Wein’s long-standing Newport All-Stars band. “There is a core group who have worked with George during the last decade of his life and who George loved – Lewis Nash, Lew Tabackin, Randy Brecker, Anat Cohen, and Jay Leonhart,” McBride explains. “We knew we wanted those musicians to be a part of this performance as not only are they great musicians but had a deep connection with George.”

Two others scheduled to appear in the tribute to George Wein are not part of his All-Star group but still had a deep connection with the pianist. Both Jon Faddis and McBride himself took part in Wein’s final public performance in 2019. It was an incredibly special event, even if the bassist believed the leader had more music in him. “[George] always had a knack of rallying back again,” McBride recalls. “ I was sure he would be back playing in 2021. [But George] was at peace and seemed to accept that his time had come.”

But is the focus on music beyond labels, borders, and preset artist configurations great lessons from Newport’s founder or merely reflective of jazz’s continually expansive nature? “I don’t know,” says McBride. “When you are talking about a legend like George, there is a lot of not merely knowledge but wisdom. A lot of life lessons as well … I’m sure there’s some lesson I’ve learned from George that I won’t even fully realize the significance of for another couple of years. I think that’s just the way life works sometimes.”

Perhaps not all of Wein’s lessons are fully grasped because they are still being learned. “[E]ven with George gone, his spirit is very much alive with all of the musicians who knew him and all the fans who have been coming to the festival for many years,” concludes McBride. “I have a feeling that George’s presence will still be felt at Newport for a very long time.”

The 2022 Newport Jazz Festival will take place from July 29 to July 31 at historic Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island. More information on the event is available on its website.