Digital Interviews: Tell us about the musical scene in Philadelphia while you were growing up.

Christian McBride: The active jazz scene bled into what became the "Philadelphia era" and the "national era" of soul music, which hit their peak right around the time I was born -- 1972. Billy Paul had his first major hit with “Me & Mrs. Jones.” The O'Jays had “Back Stabbers.” Man, there was lots of stuff goin’ on. Hal Melvin and the Blue Notes, with a young Teddy Pendergrass as their lead singer. So, that went all the way through the ‘70s. Then, toward the late ‘70s, Grover Washington started getting gold records, and the jazz scene resurfaced in Philly. There was always lots of stuff going on. That was a really great place to grow up. In the early ‘80s, when the Philadelphia “international” scene started to die out, Grover became the national hero of Philadelphia. Then Pieces of a Dream came out. They emanated out of Grover’s band. They really were hot in the early ‘80s. By the time I graduated from high school, little did I know that half of the graduating class was going to turn out to be superstars -- Boyz II Men; Ahmir Thompson, who’s better known to the hip-hop world as ?uestlove -- he runs the group called the Roots; organist Joey De Francesco, my good buddy; guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel; and Amel Larrieux, who used to sing with Groove Theory, who now has her own thing happening in the R&B world. There was so much stuff going on in Philly growing up.

DI: You also had musical roots in your family.

CM: Oh, completely -- my great-uncle, a bass player, as well as my father, also a bass player. I didn’t grow up with my dad, so I didn’t see him on a regular basis, but I saw him enough where I got the inspiration -- I needed to want to play music.

DI: Tell us about attending Juilliard.

CM: That’s when I left Philly, to move up here to New York City. I learned a lot at Juilliard. It was actually my original intention to have a dual career. I wanted to have a career playing as much music as possible. I wanted to try to play jazz if I could. I wanted to play classical. I wanted to play R&B. I wanted to try to play everything but, obviously, that would be really hard to do. I went to Juilliard, obviously on a classical scholarship. I figured I was in New York City, so I would get to go to jam sessions and play with all of the jazz cats at night, and I could study classical in school during the day. But, you know, one thing led to another, and I wound up getting a lot of gigs on the jazz scene, and I had to temporarily hang up my classical career.

DI: So you became a jazz sideman?

CM: Yeah. The most significant bands I played in when I first got to New York were Bobby Watson’s band, Roy Hargrove’s first band, Benny Golson’s band, Benny Green’s trio, and probably the most significant out of all of those, for me personally, was playing in Freddie Hubbard’s band.

DI: You must have learned quite a lot, above and beyond what you learned in school, playing with some of these older cats.

CM: Oh, yeah. Completely.

DI: Then you put out your 1994 debut solo release, Gettin’ to It. What was your goal with that album?

CM: My mission was to make a really straightforward musical statement. Obviously, I love so many different styles of music, but I figured that, for my first CD, I would do something really simple and basic -- something that my wild ideas could grow out of.

DI: You were laying a musical foundation?

CM: Exactly.

DI: Did that grow with the release of 1995's Number Two Express?

CM: I would like to think so. When the Gettin’ to It CD came out, it was received well and sold a significant amount of records. I already had garnered this reputation of being a real old-school, traditional kind of guy. I believe that people were getting this impression that I was really like a sixty year-old man in a twenty-three year-old body -- which was really not the case at all. Doing a record like Gettin’ to It just fueled the flames even more. Then after Gettin’ to It came out, having Ray Brown and Milt Hinton on the record -- “Obviously, he’s definitely a torchbearer for the old jazz traditionalists.” I’m very proud to hold that torch, but at the same time, I’m not making conscious musical efforts to tip my cap to something that happened before me. I’m really into trying to make music that has current influences. I’m not even 30 yet. I like making music that people in my generation identify with.

DI: You also gigged with Ray Brown, earlier in your career, as part of the Super Bass project.

CM: For my money, Ray Brown is the greatest living bass player. Every great thing that’s happened on bass since Ray Brown -- all of us point back to him. That’s where it started, you know. Ray Brown is definitely a walking master, and to get to play with him is obviously an opportunity that no one should ever pass up.

DI: Tell us about the projects you did for the Portland Arts Society and for Lincoln Center.

CM: Other than playing and touring, I’ve also been very interested in doing a lot of writing. I started writing when I was in high school. A good friend of mine named Robert Landham, a guy I grew up with in Philadelphia, was a big Wayne Shorter fan. When I was growing up, I was always going over to his house. He was saying, “Christian. I gotta turn you on to this...” He was always making references to the structure of the songs, as well as the improvising. Hanging with Rob, learning a lot from him, and him pulling out certain things, particularly on Wayne Shorter, Woody Shaw and Thelonious Monk records, I really got into composing. At some point around five or six years ago, I really got interested in writing for big bands. I know that’s a giant task, so that’s something I wanted to slowly get into. I don’t know what happened -- maybe Wynton Marsalis got wind that I was interested in writing for a big band. Out of nowhere, I get this commission to write a piece for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. I remember asking Wynton, “Man, are you sure you want to do this? I’ve never written for a big band before.” He said, “I bet you can do it.” That was my first chance to write for a large ensemble, and that turned out well. Then, about two years later, I got another commission, a partial commission from the National Endowment for the Arts and the other half of the commission from the Portland Arts Society. That was to write a piece for my quartet at the time, and a 60-piece gospel choir. Obviously, I wanted to take on the task, but I thought, “60-piece?”

DI: You were hesitant?

CM: Big time. [laughs] For a choir? I never really had much of an interest to write lyrics, so I’m thinking, “I don’t know if I should do this now.” But, once again, they had faith in me. They said, “We think you can do it.” So, I wrote that piece, called “The Movement Revisited,” and it turned out well. We did four concerts, and it looks as if I’m going to do it again, not only with the 60-piece gospel choir, but also with maybe a 15-piece band.

DI: Are you still teaching any classes? Do you find time for that?

CM: I still teach. I don’t have a regular schedule, but I teach privately, and I also do a lot of clinics at different schools, whenever I have time to do them, in most cities.

DI: Is it important to you to pass on the lessons?

CM: It’s funny, because I find a lot of musicians actually don’t like to do that. They say, “Well, they’re going to ask dumb questions.” Had it not been for musicians like Wynton, his brother Branford, Kenny Barron, Bobby Watson and all kinds of guys, taking time out of their busy schedules to come and teach us when we were in high school, I don’t know how serious I would have become about being a jazz musician. So, I totally believe that it’s my duty to give it back.

DI: In 1998 you released A Family Affair.

CM: That was my first blatant attempt at really trying to say, “Okay, listen. [laughs] I’m really not this jazz traditionalist guy you’ve been making me out to be all of these years.” The music that’s on A Family Affair is a combination of the two musics that I love more than anything else, R&B and traditional jazz. In retrospect, the CD may be a little bit schizophrenic at times. It goes from a really obvious R&B groove, then the next song will be a traditional straight-ahead tune, and then the next song will be a fusion kind of thing, and then back to a traditional sound, and then to a more R&B sound. It’s definitely diverse. That’s probably an understatement. It was an experiment, an attempt. It was an experiment to try to blend those types of music together.

DI: How do you go about taking an old funk song or R&B song and reconstructing the sound? What’s that process like?

CM: There are lots of different formulas. For the most part, I sit at the piano and try to work something out. Most of the songs that I covered on the Family Affair CD were pretty easy to do over as jazz tunes. “Family Affair” is a pretty simple tune, so there really wasn’t much to do to turn it into a jazz song -- just change the groove a little bit. The first song on that CD, “I’m Coming Home” -- the original version almost kind of sounds like a New Orleans song, so again, there really wasn’t a whole lot to do.

DI: Can you describe your relationship with George Duke?

CM: Oh, man. He’s become like a second father to me. When you think of diversity, George Duke fits that bill better than a lot of people. He’s played a lot of straight-ahead jazz with people like Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley; he’s played a lot of fusion with his own groups, with Stanley Clarke; and, you know, he did the rock thing with Frank Zappa. He’s written all kinds of big arrangements for people like Burt Bacharach. So, he’s covered the board. He’s still a great pianist.

DI: How did you approach producing your latest CD, Sci-Fi, on your own?

CM: Well, I’ve always felt that most jazz artists don’t need producers. When you think of most famous producers, rock ‘n’ roll producers or pop producers, what they do is take an artist and give them a sound. They create a sound for them to do their thing in, you know. They create a sound for that particular artist. But most jazz artists know what kind of sound they want. They don’t need a producer to come in there and tell them, “Oh, I think you should do this.” I’ve always found it very strange that there’s been such a thing as producers in jazz. I’ll give you an example -- Orrin Keepnews, who produced all those great Riverside records. I really love Orrin. He’s a really great guy; totally not the kind of guy who says, “Well, I produced that record.” He’s a guy who gives it all to the musicians. He said, “Look. The musicians did all the work.” As much as I appreciate him for saying that, it makes me think, “Well, why couldn’t those guys do that themselves?” You know, back then, maybe their lifestyle didn’t make it too easy for them to produce, to do the coordinating part. So, when I went into the studio to do this new CD, I felt the same way. I had some very strong ideas about things I wanted to do, the kind of sound that I wanted, and I just didn’t really feel like I needed to explain myself to anyone at the label, you know.

DI: Is this the direction you want to take things in the future?

CM: I would like to do that.

DI: Are you going to continue to play with people from different genres?

CM: I think it can only enhance your musical abilities and give you all kinds of really cool inspiration to make some good music. Hey, I’ll do it. [laughs] As a matter of fact, I’m just coming from a project now. I just did a recording with the Roots. It’s me, ?uestlove, DJ Jazzy Jeff -- Pat Martino is playing guitar. It’s a real interesting record, I think.

DI: What advice would you give a young musician, about playing music and getting to where they want to go with it?

CM: Watch your attitude. [laughs] I don’t mean to sound like so much of an old head, but there is another generation behind me, out there, doing it now. I find that, with the whole hip-hop generation, there’s a lot of attitude. Whether it’s confidence or arrogance or whichever, I will always say to a young guy, “Nobody wants to work with an a--hole.” [laughs] You know, you can still be a great player. You can still play all of the baddest licks in the world. But if you don’t have a good attitude, nobody’s going to work with you. There’s a lot of guys I hear who are, you know, “I’m not trying to play bebop. I’m trying to make new music.” Stop trying to make new music; just make music that’s in your heart, and it’s going to happen automatically, whether you try or not.