Christian McBride debuts his new band Inside Straight with the slightly tongue-in-cheek title, this month. The foremost acoustic jazz bassist of his generation, and a pretty fine electric one as well, if recent touring with the Five Peace Band is anything to go by. McBride was a bright talent in a generation of fine players to emerge in the States at that time and the Philadelphian went on to make a successful solo debut on Verve in 1994. Since then he has alternated between acoustic, post-Weather Report and James Brown Ropeadope funk side projects and electric jazz-rock. Kevin Le Gendre talks to McBride about his approach to creating his new group which includes the distinctive sounds of the vibraphone courtesy Mack Avenue Records.

Jazz has a long tradition of bands that comprise several generations of players. The exchange of points of view, culture and above all energy produces startling results when the right personalities come together, old and young complementing rather than undermining one another.  Loosely related to this is the phenomenon of the group that comprises a respected teacher and several students, of which an obvious recent example is Anthony Braxton and his Wesleyan wünderkinder .

Bass virtuoso Christian McBride has taken a similar course with his new project, a quintet. One of the key members of the outfit, the vibraphonist Warren Wolf, is actually a former charge who went streaking ahead in the precocious talent stakes. “Yeah, he is an old student of mine from a jazz summer camp that I’ve been teaching on,” McBride tells me over the phone from his home in New York. “And he was so far ahead of everybody else that I said ‘one of these days I will give you a gig and you can take that to the bank!’ So we got a gig at the Village Vanguard and I called Warren, as planned, and some of the other guys that I hadn’t played with for a while.”

 This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #132 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a FREE Warner Jazz CD