McBride’s Brother Malcolm brings chill to a cold night
In Inuit terms, it’s as cold as a three-dog night but Wellingtonians, being a hardy bunch, just refer to it as a seagulls-flyingupside-down sort of day. Thankfully the Opera House heaters were cranked up to 11.
Christian McBride (double bass) and his band; Josh Evans (trumpet), Marcus Strickland (tenor sax) and bass clarinet and drummer Nasheet Waits were given a rousing welcome for the opening night of the Wellington Jazz Festival before the band kicked off with a raucous number intended to get the chops working.
Most tunes were played to a wellrehearsed format, with McBride playing genial host and with plenty of banter between numbers.
Bass or drums would start before trumpet or sax followed and it’s here that I felt it would be worth hearing a cuttin’ session when instruments challenge each other.
Too often they played solos and when they did come together, as was the case between sax and trumpet, it was usually to emphasise harmony.
In a set list that was nearly all originals, the best was Brother Malcolm ,a tribute to Malcolm X. With an inventive bass clarinet intro, the tune explored the zeitgeist that was the troubled Malcolm. Dark in tone and solemn, the clarinet echoed a feeling of the South and at times felt like the music to a NAACP march.
The percussion had elements of slavery, even if drums were banned from the plantations. The middle bars seemed to expose Malcolm’s turmoil in his later years, which was covered by an even more sombre note, that of a funeral march as if foretelling of his assassination.
The tune should have been left in situ rather than segueing into another piece.
With a pianoless quartet, McBride’s group mirrored Ornette Coleman’s famous lineup and it was fitting that the evening finished with a Coleman tune: Good Life, which had a jaunty South American feel.
Good to know that most of these tracks will appear later this year on a new album for those who couldn’t make this night.