Christian McBride’s Multiple Recent Offerings Prove He Is a Jazz Institution Unto Himself

Christian McBride‘Remembering Ray Brown Trio and Ursa Major’Streaming Through May 10Christian McBride & Edgar Meyer‘Who’s Gonna Play the Melody?’Mack Avenue JazzChristian McBride & Ursa Major‘More Is’ (EP)At 52, Christian McBride is a very solid example of a contemporary jazz musician who leads any number of different bands and different projects to express a wide range of musical impulses. Including a major concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center a few nights ago and both a new album and a new single, Mr. McBride has just given us samples of three completely different ensembles.Two of these were heard at Rose Hall on Friday and Saturday: a one-man double-header of a concert that began with the Remembering Ray Brown Trio and concluded with Mr. McBride’s new-ish quintet, Ursa Major. The third group is a duo with a fellow bassist, Nashville-based Edgar Meyer. The two are heard together on Mr. McBride’s latest full-length album, “Who’s Gonna Play the Melody?”The trio was dedicated to a pioneering bassist and bandleader, Ray Brown, who was a potent force in jazz long enough that his disciples are major players on the current scene. Both pianist Benny Green and drummer Greg Hutchinson were part of one of Brown’s final groups, and he also served as mentor to Mr. McBride.The set dedicated to his memory began with an absolutely kicking version of “Summer Wind,” a Sinatra hit that Brown recorded in at least four different settings. This German song showed how much all four of these players owe to the great Oscar Peterson, who combined high-voltage energy and swing with pure melody better than anybody. They followed with Dizzy Gillespie’s “Tanga,” which was, if anything, even faster. At the opposite end of the speed spectrum there was an achingly slow “Li’l Darlin” that showed how it was possible to sustain suspense even without a relentless, Petersonian tempo. In between, they gave us an original by guitarist Kenny Burrell that seemed dedicated both to Mr. McBride and Brown, titled “Bass Face.”For the second half, Mr. McBride introduced us to a group of considerably younger players: tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover, guitarist Ely Perlman, pianist Mike King, and drummer Savannah Harris. While Mr. Perlman plays an electrified guitar throughout, Messrs. King and McBride alternated between the acoustic and electric versions of their instruments, meaning the group is both mostly electric and mostly acoustic at different points. Like most of what we once called fusion, the music of Ursa Major is driven by original compositions and general mood.If the Ray Brown-inspired group is powered by melodic virtuosity and sheer speed, this group is decidedly more “chill,” to employ a 21st century colloquialism. As often happens when I don’t have a familiar melody to serve as a road map, it’s easier to get completely lost in these original tunes — which is, in this case especially, a powerful and profound experience. I agree with the sentiment of the title of Ursa Major’s first single, the newly released “More Is”: Yes, I’d like to hear more.“Who’s Gonna Play the Melody?” is a double-length set that includes jazz standards, like “Solar,” credited to guitarist Chuck Wayne and associated with Miles Davis, which proves to any doubters who might be out there that a team of two bass players can indeed be an ensemble unto itself. It concludes with a protracted dive into the basic blues on the bluegrass standard “Tennessee Blues,” in which one of the two bassists plays a profoundly deep blues bowing arco while the other accompanies and offers knowing commentary, plucking pizzicato. There are also two bass-on-bass love songs, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” which features Mr. McBride playing Richard Rodgers’s melody arco while Mr. Meyer switches briefly to piano, and Henry Mancini’s “Days of Wine and Roses,” a double-bass ballad all the way; presumably Mr. McBride is the wine while Mr. Meyer represents the roses.It should be stressed that these are only a few of the strings in Mr. McBride’s bow; in other guises, he serves as artistic director for the Newport Jazz Festival and for jazz programming at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, as well as hosting jazz shows on both NPR and Sirius XM. Like JALC’s founder and artistic director, Wynton Marsalis, Mr. McBride is the best kind of institution unto himself — one that swings.

Christian McBride’s Multiple Recent Offerings Prove He Is a Jazz Institution Unto Himself

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