Celebrity Series of Boston
Gary Dunning, President and Executive Director
Presents
Christian McBride Trio
with Cécile McLorin Salvant
Friday, February 6, 2015, 8pm — Sanders Theatre
(Boston) Celebrity Series of Boston will present the Christian McBride Trio with Cécile McLorin Salvant on Friday, February 6, 2015, at 8pm at Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall, Harvard University, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge. Sponsored by Donna and Mike Egan. Media Partner is 89.7 WGBH.
Tickets start at $40, and are available online at www.celebrityseries.org, by calling the Celebrity Series box office at (617) 482-6661 Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m., or at the Harvard Box Office, Holyoke Center, 1350 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge.
This performance marks Christian McBride’s third appearance with Celebrity Series; his Celebrity Series debut was in 1995 and his most recent performance was in 2013. This performance marks Cécile McLorin Salvant’s Celebrity Series debut.
Christian McBride is a celebrated jazz bassist, composer, arranger, and educator. In 1989, the Philadelphia-born bassist moved to New York City to further his classical studies at the Juilliard School, only to be recruited by alto saxophonist, Bobby Watson. Since then, McBride has worked with Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Rollins, J.J. Johnson, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Pat Metheny. In the R&B world, he has played with and arranged for Isaac Hayes, Chaka Khan, Natalie Cole, Lalah Hathaway, and James Brown. In the pop/rock world, he has collaborated with Sting, Carly Simon, Don Henley, and Bruce Hornsby. In hip-hop, he has worked with the Roots, D’Angelo, and Queen Latifah. In other specialty projects, he’s worked with opera legend Kathleen Battle, bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer, the Shanghai Quartet and the Sonus Quartet.
In 1997, Christian spoke on former President Bill Clinton’s town hall meeting “Racism in the Performing Arts.” In 2000, he was named Artistic Director of the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Summer Sessions. In 2005, he was officially named the co-director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Also in 2005, he was named the second Creative Chair for Jazz of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.
In 1998, McBride composed, “The Movement, Revisited”, a four-movement suite dedicated to four of the major figures of the civil rights movement – Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The piece was commissioned by the Portland (ME) Arts Society and the National Endowment for the Arts. The piece was performed throughout the New England states in the fall of 1998 with McBride’s quartet and a 30-piece gospel choir led by J.D. Steele. Ten years later in 2008, “The Movement, Revisited” was re-vamped and performed again in Los Angeles at Walt Disney Concert Hall with the gospel choir, an 18-piece big-band and four actors/speakers.
His ensembles include The Christian McBride Band, A Christian McBride Situation and his most recent group, Inside Straight (who released their 2009 recording, Kind of Brown). McBride released two CDs with his band, 2002’s “Vertical Vision” and 2006’s “Live at Tonic.” In 2009, Christian released his quintet CD “Christian McBride & Inside Straight.” His next release was “Conversations with Christian” a recording of duets. He released The Good Feeling in 2011, his first big band recording as a leader and newest release for Mack Avenue Records.
Jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant won the prestigious 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition as the youngest finalist. Born in Miami to a French mother and Haitian father, McLorin Salvant’s first language was French. She immersed herself in classical music before she turned to jazz—starting on piano at age five and joining the Miami Choral Society at age eight. McLorin Salvant attended college in Aix-en-Provence in France, where she continued to develop as a singer, with an emphasis on classical and baroque vocal music as well as jazz.
McLorin Salvant entered into a musical partnership with reed player and teacher Jean-François Bonnel, first as a student and soon as a performer. Before returning to the US, she gave concerts in Paris, recorded with Bonnel’s quintet, and immersed herself in early jazz and blues. By the time she took the stage in the Monk Competition, she had drawn on this unusual set of formative experiences in shaping a personal style of jazz singing.
She recently released her first CD, WomanChild, on Mack Avenue Records in 2013. On the album, her repertoire ranges from the 19th century ballads to her own waltz “Le Front Caché Sur Tes Genoux” which draws on a poem by Haitian writer Ida Salomon Faubert. She is joined by a world class band: pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Rodney Whitaker, guitarist James Chirillo and drummer Herlin Riley.
Program to be announced from the stage.
About Celebrity Series of Boston
Celebrity Series of Boston was founded in 1938 by pianist and impresario Aaron Richmond. Over the course of its 76-year history, Celebrity Series has presented an array of the world’s greatest performing artists, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arturo Toscanini, Ignace Paderewski, Artur Rubenstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Andrés Segovia, Kirsten Flagstad, Marian Anderson, Luciano Pavarotti, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Martha Graham, Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mstislav Rostropovich, and the New York City Opera Company.
The Celebrity Series has been bringing the very best performers–from orchestras and chamber ensembles, vocal and piano music, to dance companies, jazz, and more–to Boston’s major concert halls for 76 years. The Celebrity Series of Boston believes in the power of excellence and innovation in the performing arts to enrich life experiences, transform lives and build better communities. Through its education initiatives, the Celebrity Series seeks to build a community of Greater Boston where the performing arts are a valued, lifelong, shared experience–on stages, in schools, at home– everywhere. For more information on Celebrity Series of Boston, call (617) 482-2595 or visit us online at www.celebrityseries.org.
The Celebrity Series of Boston, Inc. receives generous support from Amy & Joshua Boger; Donna & Mike Egan; Gabor Garai & Susan Pravda; David & Harriet Griesinger; Paul L. King; The Royal Little Family Foundation; Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation; Eleanor & Frank Pao; The John S. and Cynthia Reed Foundation; Sanjay & Sangeeta Verma; Nancy Richmond Winsten; Charlesbank Capital Partners LLC; First Republic Bank; Foley & Lardner; Massachusetts Cultural Council;The Peabody Foundation; PTC; Tufts Health Plan; The D.L. Saunders Real Estate & Hotel Investment Group, AMO; Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
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