Bass players are known for having big hands, but even by the standards of his thumping profession, Christian McBride possesses a creative reach that’s positively Shaq-like.
McBride’s speaking voice, a calm, amused, and fluent baritone, has become familiar to millions of Americans via his gig as the genial host of Jazz Night in America, a weekly radio show and multimedia collaboration between WBGO, NPR, and Jazz at Lincoln Center that broadcasts concerts around the country. He also hosts and produces The Lowdown: Conversations With Christian, an occasional SiriusXM show produced from the National Jazz Museum in Harlem (where he’s co-artistic director with Jon Batiste). As a curator, McBride has been running the world’s oldest jazz festival since 2016, when Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein tapped him as successor.
Given his manifold offstage responsibilities, it’s a wonder that McBride maintains such a busy performance schedule, an itinerary that centers on Northern California in the coming weeks. The bassist kicks off his unofficial Bay Area residency at SFJAZZ’s Miner Auditorium March 22–23 with his band Ursa Major, which showcases a constellation of rising young stars.
The electroacoustic quintet’s frontline features saxophonist Nicole Glover — who’s toured with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, among others — and Israeli guitarist, songwriter, and producer Ely Perlman — a recent graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music who’s rapidly making a name for himself in New York with his own projects and as a sideman.
Joining McBride in the steamroller rhythm section are Oakland-reared drummer Savannah Harris and Chicago pianist and keyboardist Mike King, known for his work with heavyweight trumpeters Marquis Hill, Theo Croker, and Marcus Printup. Ursa Major also plays two shows on March 24 at Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center.
“It’s always great to come play SFJAZZ, but it’s particularly special with Savannah,” said McBride, 52, pointing up his drummer’s Bay Area background. “It’s actually our second time [here] with Ursa Major, but back in 2022, it was like our second or third gig ever, and we didn’t have a name yet. A lot of her family and high school friends came out to [that] show, so it was great energy. I’m so ecstatic to play with these young cats. The band’s still got that new-car smell.”
Taking on a moniker is more than branding. As one would expect with a band that’s majority early-career musicians, Ursa Major has grown exponentially in the past three years. McBride encourages the young players to bring in their own tunes, “which is what makes the band’s personality,” he said. “I love great players. That’s the core of what makes a really great improvisational group. But if you can bring in musicians who are good writers as well, you’re setting up those players for longevity — not just playing gigs but establishing themselves as composers.”
Harris, the daughter of eminent Bay Area jazz and concert pianist Frederick Harris, graduated from Oakland Technical High School and studied journalism at Howard University. She quickly established an unofficial double major in music, playing with the school’s jazz ensemble. Forging ties to many eminent Howard alumni and the scene in Washington, D.C., in general, she found that the “community really embraced me and gave me a lot to work with and work on,” she said.
When Harris made the move to New York City in 2016 the day after graduation, she played her first gigs with the late, revered pianist and composer Geri Allen. Now living in Crown Heights, Harris has made regular trips back to the Bay Area to perform with an array of leading players, including vocalist extraordinaire Cécile McLorin Salvant, Trinidadian trumpeter and percussionist Etienne Charles, Israeli bassist Or Bareket, and Los Angeles soul and hip-hop singer Georgia Anne Muldrow.
It’s the youth and diversity of her Ursa Major bandmates “that’s most interesting, the potential expansion and versatility,” Harris said. “We all come from strikingly different backgrounds, but a shared language was present immediately. We’re really fleshing that out. Nicole, Mike, and I knew each other prior to this, and since Christian formed the group, we’ve played together a lot in other configurations, getting the opportunity to work out a sound.”
Starting from a very different place of collaboration, McBride is back in the Bay Area with star pianist Brad Mehldau’s trio for concerts April 2 at Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall, April 3–6 at SFJAZZ, and April 7 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center. In trio settings, Mehldau almost always plays with his working unit of Jeff Ballard or Jorge Rossy on drums and Felix Moseholm on bass (the young Danish bassist recently took over the chair after Larry Grenadier’s quarter-century tenure). With his regulars unavailable for this West Coast tour, Mehldau called 38-year-old drummer Marcus Gilmore and McBride, who was still a freshman at Juilliard in 1989 when he first met the pianist.
“Brad was at The New School, and there were jam sessions at a club called Augie’s, which is now Smoke, where all the young cats used to hang,” McBride recalled. “Roy Hargrove, Spike Wilner, Antoine Roney, Eric McPherson. Jesse Davis led the band there, and there was a lot of playing with a lot of people.”
When Berkeley saxophonist Joshua Redman put his first touring band together in 1993, it featured Mehldau, McBride, and drummer Brian Blade, a group that has reunited for two albums and a series of tours in recent years.
But Mehldau made it clear he wanted to explore a different direction in the cooperative trio. “He said, ‘I don’t want to do the trio repertoire. Let’s come up with some new stuff,’” McBride explained. “Brad and Marcus both have well-established personalities with how they play. No matter what we do, it’s going to feel and sound great.”
McBride is back at SFJAZZ again on April 10 for the opening night of piano maestro Kenny Barron’s four-concert residency. The multigenerational all-star quintet for that evening also represents a celebration of Philadelphia’s jazz legacy, as every player except trumpeter Mike Rodriguez hails from the City of Brotherly Love. (“I love Mike,” McBride said. “I’ve known him for 25 years, since he came to the summer program in Aspen that I run.”)
At 81, Barron, an NEA Jazz Master, is a direct link to the thriving 1950s Philly scene that produced John Coltrane, the Heath Brothers, and dozens of other players who went on to New York renown. McBride has maintained close ties to his hometown, as his Barron Quintet bandmates, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and drummer Johnathan Blake, can attest.
“Immanuel showed me a photo [of the two of us from] when he was 8 years old, [but] I’m clearly not a kid,” McBride said with a chuckle. “To see [how far] he’s come, I couldn’t be more proud. He’s such an incredible player and person. The same with Johnathan. I’ve known him since he was a preteen [and] I played with his dad, the great violinist John Blake Jr.”
McBride’s got a passel of other irons in the fire, but Bay Area music lovers should know about the project he recently finished producing for Ledisi, the powerhouse singer who got her start in Oakland as an ostentatiously talented jazz and R&B performer. After paying tribute to Nina Simone with 2021’s Ledisi Sings Nina, the now-Los Angeles-based vocalist has turned her attention to the jazz queen who laid the foundation for R&B, Dinah Washington.
A longtime fan of Ledisi’s, McBride first heard about her in the 1990s from Peter Williams, who was booking Yoshi’s in Oakland at the time. “Peter said, ‘Are you familiar with the local singer Ledisi? You two have got to get together!’ I’d never heard Peter speak so strongly about someone before,” McBride recalled. “He planted the seed.”
From Philly and Oakland to Aspen, Harlem, and New Jersey, McBride continues to sow the seeds of swing and funk. It’s a miracle he has time to gather so much of the bountiful harvest.
