1 CD |
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Notify when available |
Label Artistry music |
UPC 0610614708720 |
Catalogue number ART 7087 |
Release date 13 September 2024 |
Legendary guitarist Mike Stern has been celebrated for his versatile playing style since he first hit the scene in the 1970s, transcending genre by performing with Blood, Sweat & Tears, Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, The Brecker Brothers, David Sanborn, Béla Fleck, Yellowjackets and more. With Echoes and Other Songs, Stern brings together an all-star group of musicians (including Chris Potter, Jim Beard, Christian McBride, Antonio Sanchez, Richard Bona & Dennis Chambers) for 11 brand-new originals that will captivate and unite guitar and jazz fans of all generations.
MIKE STERNS SELECTED TRACK COMMENTS
"Stuff Happens"
"It's definitely got a Blues vibe and it opens with a short but really wonderful solo from Christian McBride. He is definitely not only one of the greatest acoustic bass players ever, but he plays amazing electric bass. Of course, I knew that going into this project so I asked him to play a lot of electric bass and he did that so beautifully on this tune. He played great on everything."
"Gospel Song"
"Gospel Song" is a ballad. It has kind of a gospel vibe so I just stuck with the working title and it seems to fit the song. I really like the way this came out and Christian McBride sounds great on Acoustic Bass. And Jim Beard played beautiful piano."
"Where's Leo?"
"Where's Leo?" has kind of a Spanish vibe. It's got a lot of energy and is played beautifully by the whole band. Antonio Sanchez and Christian McBride sound great on this and Chris Potter plays another great solo."
In the 1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement achieved its greatest moments, gifted bassist and composer Christian McBride was not yet born. As a child in the 1970s, he learned the history of the movement in school, but due to a quirk of fate – his grandmother’s fortunate propensity for saving old things – he found another source of information that spoke to him on a more emotionally accessible level than history books.
“When I was a kid, I used to spend hours looking at old copies of Ebony and Jet magazines that my grandmother saved,” he says. “To read contemporaneous writings by black writers about events and people who were my history – our history – that was absolutely fascinating to me. It was the greatest gift my grandmother could have given to me.”
That gift played a major role in the creation of The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons, McBride’s stunning masterpiece about “the struggle,” which is now a 20 year-long, continuously evolving project. The work combines elements of jazz, gospel, big band, swing, symphony, theater and dramatic spoken word, in a clear-eyed yet optimistic look at where our society has come from and where it is hopefully headed.
Born in Philadelphia, McBride was a gifted musical prodigy who soaked up influences from every direction. At the tender age of 17, he was recruited by saxophonist Bobby Watson to join his group, Horizon. During the 1990s, he proceeded to work with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Pat Metheny, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard and Chick Corea as well as major pop and rock stars like Sting, Paul McCartney, James Brown and Celine Dion. His abilities were also coveted by the classical music world, including opera legends Kathleen Battle and Renee Fleming.
In 1998, a musical commission from the Portland (Maine) Arts Society set in motion what would eventually become a major part of his life’s work. The only stipulation for the commission was that it had to include a choir. “At that time, I called it a musical portrait of the Civil Rights Movement,” Christian says. “I thought about those times and decided that rather than try to write a history of the movement, I wanted to evoke its spirit and feeling.”