Remembering Ray Brown with Christian McBride, Benny Green and Gregory Hutchinson

“Bassist extraordinaire, composer, arranger, educator, curator and administrator, Christian McBride, has been one of the most important and most omnipresent figures in the jazz world for 20 years.

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The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra began its life as the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra in 1966.The world-famous Village Vanguard jazz club in New York City booked the newly formed band for three Monday nights that February. Those performances were wildly successful and the engagement was extended indefinitely. The Village Vanguard’s owner, Max Gordon, told Mel Lewis, “We’ll keep it going until it tapers off.” Over half a century and more than 2700 Monday nights later, it still hasn’t. The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra stands apart from all other modern ensembles of its kind and is still as strong and vital as ever.

“The deep, dark-maple tone that Christian McBride elicits from an upright bass is one of jazz’s forthright pleasures, and so is the pleasure he seems to extract from it himself...He calls this band Inside Straight, applying the phrase as a badge of intent and maybe a deflective maneuver: He’ll brand this music as conventional before you ever have the chance. What that says about Mr. McBride is that he has his principles but sees the bigger picture.

“The pianist Kenny Barron has a brisk but unostentatious technique and a deceptively casual way with a phrase. He conveys a number of things clearly in his playing; what comes across over all is the quiet hum of effortless erudition. Within his playing you can hear a digest of mainstream jazz piano traditions, with bebop as the root. You can also hear the measured tension of an expert nudging himself toward a challenge.

“The pianist Kenny Barron has a brisk but unostentatious technique and a deceptively casual way with a phrase. He conveys a number of things clearly in his playing; what comes across over all is the quiet hum of effortless erudition. Within his playing you can hear a digest of mainstream jazz piano traditions, with bebop as the root. You can also hear the measured tension of an expert nudging himself toward a challenge.

“Changes come and go in Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood, but the basement club occupying 178 Seventh Avenue South since 1935 remains a stable and revered New York City landmark.