Jazz Articles about Christian McBride

Bruce Hornsby: Camp Meeting

by Troy Collins
September 8, 2007

Camp Meeting, pianist Bruce Hornsby's high profile jazz trio session with heavyweight bassist Christian McBride and iconic drummer Jack DeJohnette, may seem to have materialized out of thin air, but don't you believe them. Hornsby has been gradually building to this statement his whole career.

Last year's retrospective boxed set, Intersections (RCA), revealed the varied interests of a musician who has long charted his own path. As a touring member of the Grateful Dead and regular collaborator with ...

Bruce Hornsby: Camp Meeting

by Mark F. Turner
August 6, 2007

The funny thing about roots is that you don't know how they really look until you shake loose all of the dirt. Who knew that the “popular music" pianist/songwriter/singer, Bruce Hornsby, was a jazz musician at heart? Many may recall the Grammy Award winning artist from his 1986 platinum hit and album of the same title The Way It Is (RCA), marked by new folk sounds, social consciousness lyrics, and unorthodox yet glowing piano playing. Hornsby has sinced crossed the ...

Christian McBride: Live at Tonic

by C. Michael Bailey
May 24, 2006

Bassist Christian McBride detonated a funkfest in New York City last year and documented it digitally on Live at Tonic. This three-CD set is filled to the brim with music, each disc clocking in at greater than an hour. The problem is there exists a certain 1970s self indulgence on two of the three discs. But that's okay, because the first disc is a crackerjack, the best funk workout since Miles' Agharta (Columbia, 1975).

The first CD contains ...

Christian McBride Throws Down

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 23, 2006

Philadelphia native Christian McBride stands among contemporary music's heaviest musicians. That's no reflection of McBride's physical stature, or even of his cavernous speaking voice. It is descriptive of his powerful, profoundly resonant voice on acoustic and electric bass. It almost certainly applies to his formidable body of work, which includes seven albums as a leader and session work with legends inside (Jimmy Smith, McCoy Tyner) and outside (Kathleen Battle, Sting) the world of jazz, all of which seems to have ...

Christian McBride: Live At Tonic

by David Miller
May 21, 2006

Talk about bringin' da funk. Christian McBride and his ensemble of regular band members and special guests brought their A game to Tonic on January 3 and 4, 2005. McBride, well known for his jazz chops and frequent collaborations with Pat Metheny and Chick Corea (among others), has never been one to shy away from his influences. Live at Tonic, a three-disc collection recorded at the downtown New York nightspot, is at its heart a funk album, at times chugging ...

Christian McBride Band at Chicago Symphony Center

by Paul Olson
May 18, 2006

Christian McBride Band Symphony Center, Chicago May 12, 2006It couldn't be done. There was no way that bassist/bandleader Christian McBride could be as tautly, thrillingly funky in the august setting of Chicago's Symphony Hall as he was last year in New York's tiny, olfactorily dubious Tonic nightclub. I wasn't at McBride's two-night, January 2005 stand at Tonic, but the sonic evidence of those evenings is available on the new three-CD Ropeadope Live at Tonic album, ...

Christian McBride: Live at Tonic

by John Kelman
May 17, 2006

Given jazz's spontaneous nature, it's often best experienced live. Jazz meccas like New York offer an additional opportunity to experience one-off events where guests sit in with a club's featured artist. For those of us living in cities where this is not such a common occurrence, albums like Live at Tonic are especially important.

Christian McBride's bread and butter is primarily mainstream jazz, as featured on nearly 300 recordings. But since A Family Affair (Verve, 1996), the bassist's own records ...