Christian McBride — a jazz musician who has performed bass for the past 30 years — will bring his newest ensemble, Ursa Major, to the Hanover Inn on April 16 at 7:30 p.m. The sold-out performance is part of the Hopkins Center for the Arts’ 2024-25 season.
According to Hopkins Center programming manager Karen Henderson, McBride’s credentials extend beyond his musical talent.
“Besides winning multiple prestigious awards and being excellent, he also has taken on leadership roles in many different organizations,” Henderson said.
McBride currently serves as the artistic director of the Newport Jazz Festival, which Henderson described as “the premier rural jazz festival.”
In addition to his role at Newport, McBride hosts NPR’s “Jazz Night in America” and SiriusXM's “The Lowdown: Conversations With Christian.” He also serves as Artistic Director for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the TD James Moody Jazz Festival and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
Jordan Jones, a graduate student in computer science and pianist for Dartmouth’s Coast Jazz Orchestra, has long admired McBride’s work. His appreciation for McBride’s “thunderous” playing style reflects the bassist’s generational jazz influence.
“I've always tuned into Christian McBride’s work, ranging from his work with Brad Mehldau in the 90s to more recent with his work in the Jazz Cruise with people like Anat Cohen,” Jones said. “I can’t think of jazz and bass together without thinking of him.”
In addition to McBride, Ursa Major features four younger, up-and-coming jazz musicians. Saxophonist Nicole Glover, whose recent album “Strange Lands” received four stars from The London Times, is also a member of the supergroup ARTEMIS and serves on faculty at Princeton University, Manhattan School of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Guitarist Ely Perlman, born in 1999 in Tel Aviv, Israel, is still a student at Berklee College of Music and has collaborated with acclaimed artists Shai Maestro and Ben Wendel.
The final two members of the ensemble are pianist Michael King — a Chicago native who began playing drums before finding his true voice on the keys — and drummer Savannah Harris, who won the Harlem Stage Emerging Artist Award in 2019.
Henderson emphasized that this lineup reflects McBride’s commitment to developing new talent.
“That’s what he does,” Henderson said. “He finds this incredible talent and he gets them all together and jumpstarts their careers. We’re very excited about presenting new artists and new perspectives on jazz because they all come from different perspectives. They’re all over the place as far as styles, and it's really interesting.”
Amy Norton ’23, a senior member of Coast Jazz Orchestra who also serves as the ensemble’s librarian, believes that watching accomplished jazz musicians can be particularly enlightening for other musicians.
“To improvise in jazz and really sound so fluent and intelligent with your playing takes a lot more than I think non-musicians would expect, which makes it all look even cooler for musicians to hear really good, improvised jazz performances,” Norton said.
Jones believes that seeing established artists like McBride perform alongside younger musicians has particular significance for student musicians.
“The mixing of the old and the new is really symbolic,” Jones said. “For younger musicians, I think that representation is important.”
The combination of established and emerging talent represents a core principle of jazz education. Henderson noted that McBride and his wife run Jazz House Kids, a youth center and teaching space in New Jersey.
“It’s really pretty amazing. There are very few things like that of its kind,” Henderson said.
According to Jones, a key aspect of jazz that audience members might miss is the communication between musicians.
“I tend to view music as a language,” Jones said. “An audience member who is not deeply entrenched in the jazz tradition may not understand the amount of communication that happens on the bandstand.”
Jones elaborated on this communication, explaining that piano bass provides “complexity and profundity.”
“The sheer amount of communication that has to occur—both players have to have their ears open and fingers ready to respond and produce good music,” he said.
For Norton, what makes a jazz performance memorable is seeing the musicians interact with each other.
“I love when we get to see the interactions between the members of the band,” Norton said. “When they’re appreciating what the other people on stage are doing, that can be really cool and that's also a sign that they're just really into it.”
When watching performances, Norton approaches them with both an analytical and emotional mindset.
“Obviously I want to be able to learn something if I’m watching a really good jazz performance, but I also just really love to just get into it and kind of zone out and really just enjoy the music in the moment,” she said.
Henderson noted that while the Hopkins Center has a “robust jazz audience” that tends to skew older, she’s seeing increased interest from students.
“I think there are more and more students that are becoming interested in the art form, and because there are so many different elements to jazz, it speaks to many different tastes and sensibilities,” she said.
Henderson hopes students will appreciate the artistry of McBride and his ensemble.
“We want our students and our community to see themselves in the artists that we bring, and we want them to be inspired,” she said.
The performance is funded in part by the Marion and Frederick B. Whittemore 1953 Distinguished Artists Series and the Bob Gatzert 1951 Jazz Series Fund for the Hopkins Center.
