''Live at the Village Vanguard'' is a live album recorded by American jazz bassist

Christian McBride Christian McBride (born May 31, 1972) is an American jazz bassist, composer and arranger. He has appeared on more than 300 recordings as a sideman, and is an eight-time Grammy Award winner. McBride has performed and recorded with a number of j ...

with his band Inside Straight.

Mack Avenue Mack Avenue Records is an independent record label in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. Background Mack Avenue was founded in 1999 by Gretchen Carhartt Valade, a jazz fan and chair of the American apparel company Carhartt. The company is a sponsor ...

released the album on , mentioning that this is the companion album for his 2015 record of the same name. This is McBride's twelfth release with Mack Avenue Music Group.

Background

McBride and his group Inside Straight of saxophonist Steve Wilson, pianists Eric Reed and Peter Martin, vibraphonist Warren Wolf, and drummer Carl Allen, have performed annually at the New York jazz club

Village Vanguard The Village Vanguard is a jazz club at Seventh Avenue South in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. Originally, the club presented folk music and beat poetry, but it became primarily a jazz ...

starting from 2007 and been interrupted only by the lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. McBride has recorded two studio albums with Inside Straight, '' Kind of Brown'' in 2009 and ''

People Music ''People Music'' is a studio album by American jazz bassist Christian McBride together with his band Inside Straight. The record was released on via the Mack Avenue label. Background ''People Music'' is the second album for McBride's band Insi ...

'' in 2013; by this time Peter Martin had taken over the pianist position from Reed. Recorded in December 2014, the present album contains seven tracks including versions of three tracks from each of their previous studio albums and a new track, "Sweet Bread". The album should not be confused with McBride's album of the same name, ''Live at the Village Vanguard'', that he and his trio (featuring Christian Sands and Ulysses Owens, Jr.) recorded at the same venue a week earlier and released via Mack Avenue in 2015.

Reception

Brian Pristley of ''

Jazzwise ''Jazzwise'', launched in 1997, is the UK jazz monthly magazine. ''Jazzwise'' has a broad sub-genre coverage, from jazz, improv, hard bop, and jazz-rock to bebop and classic jazz, and also covers jazz crossover, including jazz-funk, jazz hip-h ...

'' wrote, "The excitement of the performance communicates to the audience (and vice versa), while the intensity of the mostly long tracks ensures that you don’t notice the length." Mike Jurkovic of ''

All About Jazz ''All About Jazz'' is a website established by Michael Ricci in 1995. A volunteer staff publishes news, album reviews, articles, videos, and listings of concerts and other events having to do with jazz. Ricci maintains a related site, ''Jazz Near ...

'' noted, "McBride needs no further introduction save to say he has heightened fun into an art form. His playing, even at its most pensive and persuasive, proclaims that better times are here even if just for the immediate moment. The immediate gig. This immediate assemblage of keen minded, high flying musicians. And this is their last set of the three-night stand so they'd like to play for you now." Matt Collar of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

commented, "Of course, pulling all of this together is McBride, whose robust and sinewy basslines remain as impressive as ever." David Whiteis of the ''

Jazz Journal ''Jazz Journal'' is a British jazz magazine established in 1946 by Sinclair Traill (1904–1981). It was first published in London under the title ''Pick Up'', which Traill founded as a locus for serious jazz criticism in Britain.Roberta Freund Sc ...

'' added, "McBride, as always, is strong-fingered and nimble, attaining a remarkable variety of tonal colorations while maintaining his rhythmic sureness even as he bends, twists, and contorts the tunes’ metric structures to his own ends: a paradigm of unforced, unselfconscious virtuosity."

Track listing

Personnel

– bass * Steve Wilson – alto saxophone, soprano saxophone * Carl Allen – drums * Peter Martin – piano * Warren Wolf – vibraphone

References

External links

Christian McBride Discography
{{Christian McBride 2021 live albums Christian McBride albums Mack Avenue Records albums Albums recorded at the Village Vanguard