Christian McBride Takes Reins of 62nd Newport Jazz Festival

Before winning five Grammy awards and being hailed as a “jazz virtuoso” by The New York Times, Christian McBride, touring as a bassist with all-star lineup of Jazz Futures, played his first Newport Jazz Festival in 1991. Now, five Grammys and 25 years later, he is returning again — but his presence will be felt not on the main-stage, but behind it, as he takes over the festival from George Wein, the founder and soul of the festival since its inception in 1954.

After over 60 years of managing the internationally acclaimed festival, Wein, at age 90, appears poised to retire. Announced by the Newport Jazz Foundation, a nonprofit endowment for the festival, McBride will officially hold the post of Artistic Director, replacing Wein.

While the lineup for this year has already been finalized, plans are being laid for 2017, the first year of McBride’s scheduled tenure. Danny Melnick, longtime associate producer, has also been placed on the management team of next year’s festival, and will collaborate with McBride on a lineup.

McBride is widely considered as a true grandmaster in myriad jazz forms, and his diverse talent was echoed by Wein himself, who lauded McBride, noting that, “Christian fits the bill in his concern for all types of jazz. He’s interested in the totality of the music.” This echoes the oft-diverse lineups of the festival itself, which has traditionally hosted widely recognized masters like Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong, and also embraced the advent of fusion jazz in the early ’70s, placing it well-ahead of the both the critical community and festival circuit at large.

Bruce Gordon, a chairman at the board for the Newport Festivals Foundation, which also includes the Newport Folk Festival under its administrative umbrella, stated that reaction to McBride’s appointment was “overwhelmingly positive,” and that Christian was in-fact a “first-round draft choice”—and that the rest of the board supported the appointment from the beginning.

Even though McBride is still quite active as a performer, he has a great deal of experience as a festival director. He has held leadership positions at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He also tenured as a programming director for the Montclair Jazz Festival in New Jersey. In addition, he runs Jazz House Kids, an art education initiative tied to Montclair.

In spite of this diverse and extensive experience, McBride feels a sense of respect and even awe toward Newport: “We’re talking about the granddaddy of all music festivals, so this is very serious business for me,” he said in an interview session at the Lincoln Center in New York City, home to his alma mater, the Juilliard School. McBride handles the crowd naturally, with a cadence and intellect that are often on display as host of NPR’s “Jazz Night in America,”  a syndicated weekly on the airwaves.

The appointment follows McBride’s fifth Grammy win for his stunning solo-bass performance in his acoustic track “Cherokee,” a masterful melody that successfully breaks the nature and mold of bass solos, taking the instrument to places it rarely goes with a deft mastery only featured by Christian, who has been called by the New York Review and many others the “World Ambassador of Jazz.”

The 62nd Annual Newport Jazz Festival will be held between July 29-31 in Newport, RI.