(Modern Big Band, Contemporary Jazz, Spoken Word) Christian McBride - The Movement Revisited - A Musical Portrait of Four Icons - 2021, MP3, 320 kbps

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/christian-mcbride-mn0000103600/biography
Artist Biography by Matt Collar
With his bold, swinging style and robust sound, Philadelphia native Christian McBride is one of the foremost jazz bassists of his generation. Initially coming to prominence as a Young Lion in the early '90s, McBride was championed by elders including Benny Carter and his longtime idol and mentor Ray Brown. He gained attention playing alongside similarly inclined contemporaries such as trumpeter Roy Hargrove, pianist Benny Green, and saxophonist Joshua Redman. His early albums, 1994's Gettin' to It and 1995's Number Two Express, displayed his hard-swinging, acoustic post-bop sound. However, he quickly proved his versatility and broad stylistic influences with 1998's Family Affair and 2000's Sci-Fi, embracing electric fusion, funk, and soul influences. Along the way, he earned six Grammy Awards, including two for his big-band albums, 2011's The Good Feeling and 2017's Bringin' It. Along with performing, McBride is a well-known radio personality, having hosted The Lowdown: Conversations with Christian on satellite radio and Jazz Night in America on National Public Radio. His expertise has also been tapped for advisory positions, including Artistic Advisor for Jazz Programming at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), Artistic Director for Newport Jazz Festival, and Associate Artistic Director at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
Born in 1972 in Philadelphia, McBride grew up in a musical family with a mother who taught school and a father who played bass with R&B bands like the Delfonics and Billy Paul, as well as Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria. Young McBride would often accompany his father to gigs, and it was during one of those times at the Atlantic City Jazz Festival that he saw legends Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, and Ella Fitzgerald. The show had a lasting impact on McBride, who started playing the electric bass around age eight after asking for one as a Christmas present. Though his parents divorced, McBride's father remained active in his musical development and gave him his first lessons on the bass. Through his father, he developed a love of funk, jazz, and soul music. By his teens, he was playing upright bass in the school orchestra and the youth ensemble at Philadelphia's noted Settlement Music School. He played his first paying gig at 13, and by age 16 was working regularly in local jazz and R&B bands. He attended the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where he rubbed shoulders with classmates like Questlove and Black Thought of the Roots, keyboardist Joey DeFrancesco, and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel.
In 1989, McBride moved to New York City to attend the prestigious Juilliard School in Manhattan but left after one year to play with saxophonist Bobby Watson. Gigs and albums followed with luminaries including Roy Hargrove, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Green, Mulgrew Miller, Joshua Redman, Chris Potter, and more. He also worked closely with his idol and mentor, bassist Ray Brown, forming the all-star trio Super Bass with Brown and bassist John Clayton. In 1994, McBride made his debut as leader with Gettin' to It on Verve with pianist Cyrus Chestnut. Number Two Express followed a year later and featured saxophonist Kenny Garrett, pianist Chick Corea, and drummer Jack DeJohnette, among others. There were also notable outings with Herbie Hancock, Wallace Roney, Ryan Kisor, John Pizzarelli, and more.
McBride closed out the decade with A Family Affair, in which he played the electric bass and reconnected with his R&B roots. Also around this time, he began branching out, taking on the positions of artistic director of the summer jazz program at the University of Richmond, and embarking on what would be an 11-year run as artistic director of the Jazz Aspen-Snowmass summer program. He spent five years as creative chair for jazz programming at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. With 2000's Sci-Fi, McBride continued to explore his love of cross-pollinated fusion and funk. It was a sound he stuck with for his move to Warner Bros. for 2003's Vertical Vision. A year later, he earned his first Grammy playing on pianist McCoy Tyner's Illuminations. The three-disc Live at Tonic arrived in 2006 and showcased an even more wide-ranging mix of styles.
Having switched labels from Verve to Warner in the early 2000s, McBride made yet another label change, releasing the more straight-ahead New York Time on Chesky in 2006. He then joined pianist Bruce Hornsby and drummer DeJohnette for the 2007 trio album Camp Meeting. Two years later, he returned with Kind of Brown, his first album with his Inside Straight band. In 2009, he garnered his second Grammy Award for his contribution to pianist Chick Corea and guitarist John McLaughlin's Five Peace Band Live.
In 2011, the bassist introduced his big band with The Good Feeling on Mack Avenue. The album, which featured vocals by McBride's wife, singer Melissa Walker, took home the Grammy for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. He also issued the duets album Conversations with Christian that year, which featured performances with Angélique Kidjo, Sting, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and others. He then joined pianist Makoto Ozone and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts for My Witch's Blue. People Music arrived in 2013 and found the bassist once again working with his Inside Straight ensemble.
2013 also saw the release of McBride's Grammy-nominated trio album Out Here with pianist Christian Sands and drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. He picked up a second Grammy that year for his work on pianist Corea's Trilogy. Away from performing, McBride stayed active hosting The Lowdown: Conversations with Christian on satellite radio and Jazz Night in America on National Public Radio. He also continued his work as Artistic Advisor for Jazz Programming at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
Another trio effort, Live at the Village Vanguard, arrived in 2015 and included the bassist's Grammy-winning performance of "Cherokee," which took home the award for Best Improvised Jazz Solo. He then returned to his big band for 2017's Bringin' It, which earned McBride his sixth Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. In 2018, he released Christian McBride's New Jawn, an adventurous, piano-less quartet album featuring trumpeter Josh Evans, tenor saxophonist Marcus Strickland, and drummer Nasheet Waits. A year later, he teamed up with Chick Corea and Brian Blade for the live Trilogy 2 album while earning a trio of Grammy nominations for his New Jawn LP.
In February 2020, McBride released his ambitious large-ensemble work The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons, celebrating the lives of famed civil rights leaders Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and Muhammad Ali. That September, he paid tribute to legendary jazz artists Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, and Oliver Nelson with the big-band album For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver. He also joined Joshua Redman for RoundAgain, a reunion of the saxophonist's '90s quartet with pianist Brad Mehldau and drummer Brian Blade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Movement_Revisited
The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons is a studio album by American jazz bassist Christian McBride. The album was recorded in September 2013 but released only on February 7, 2020 via the Mack Avenue label.
This album is dedicated to African-American history and presents sonic portraits of such black civil icons as Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, and Barack Obama narrated by the voices of Sonia Sanchez, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Dion Graham, and Wendell Pierce. McBride explained, "When I was a kid, I used to spend hours looking at old copies of Ebony and Jet magazines that my grandmother saved. 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." The initial version of The Movement was recorded in 1998 as a four-movement suit dedicated to the first four personalities. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, McBride expanded and rewrote the album, adding Barack Obama to the list of his icons. To record the new album, he invited an 18-piece big band as well as a gospel choir. The new album was premiered in the Walt Disney Concert Hall. This is his magnum opus that has been 20 years in the making; it explores social themes that are just as actual today as they were over 50 years ago.
In his review for AllMusic, Matt Collar called the album "a powerful and deeply considered work that invokes not just the words, but also the ebullient spirit of the civil rights movement."[7] by George W. Harris of Jazz Weekly stated, "The beauty of this album is that it allows the words of the cultural giants speak for themselves, woven into the musical tapestry to serve as an inspiration and not an anvil. McBride is put on the map for an album that is both relevant musically as well as meaningful for a statement for how far we have come as a United States. Bravo." Jim Hines of Glide Magazine commented, "This stunning opus and continually evolving project combines elements of small jazz combos, gospel choir, big band, theater and dramatic, often starkly riveting and compelling spoken word through the voices of Sonia Sanchez, Wendell Pierce, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Dion Graham."
DownBeat's Giovanni Russonello commented, "When the suite soars, it follows the bandleader’s strengths. The leading upright bassist of his generation, McBride is known for his ebullient precision—his joy in the details—and for savoring the nectar inside swing rhythm. This comes through strongest in his small groups, though he ought to be more recognized for his broad-minded writing for jazz orchestra, too."[8] Ian Sinclair in his review for Morning Star stated, "It’s a fascinating and stirring set, with the music full of the melancholy of the black experience in the US, as well as joyous ecstasy." In her review for Winnipeg Free Press Keith Black wrote, "The music is a perfect container for the words. The large ensemble offers the appropriate mode for the topic; a big sound with serious depth. The ensemble writing is solid, with choral or solo portions that make the listener sit up and take notice." Chris May of All About Jazz called the album "an epic work".
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-movement-revisited-christian-mcbride-mack-avenue-records
The spring 2020 release of The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait Of Four Icons is the latest chapter in Christian McBride's inspirational salute to the African American civil rights movement and to four of its heroes: Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. Embracing big band jazz, small group jazz, gospel, funk and chorale musics, together with spoken word passages, the suite employs an eighteen-piece band, the ten-piece Voices Of The Flame gospel choir, two lead vocalists and four narrators. It concludes with a recently written fifth movement inspired by Barack Obama's election victory in 2008. At least two more movements suggest themselves: the Trump era and (bring it on) its aftermath.
The backstory: The Movement Revisited has its genesis in 1998 and a commission from the Portland (Maine) Arts Society. McBride was given a free hand in the commission other than the stipulation that it had to include a choir. He chose to write what he called a portrait of the civil rights movement, performed by a jazz quartet and a gospel choir. Rather than attempt documentary reportage in words and music, McBride set out to evoke the spirit of the movement.
In 2008, the Los Angeles Philharmonic invited McBride to make an expanded version of the suite for its upcoming concert season. (Timeline check: this was the year McBride was part of the lineup which recorded Pat Metheny's trio masterpiece Day Trip on the Nonesuch label). A few months later, Obama was elected President, and the Detroit Jazz Festival asked McBride to put together an ensemble to perform the piece. This led to the writing of the fifth movement, "Apotheosis November 4th 2008," in which the narrators playing King, Parks, X and Ali return to the stage to voice portions of Obama's victory speech.
Rewind again: As a child, McBride learnt the history of the movement in school, but he had the good fortune to discover a more emotionally accessible resource than text books—his grandmother's carefully archived collection of Jet and Ebony magazines from the 1960s and their profiles of the movement's leading lights. This was, he says, "the greatest gift my grandmother could have given me."
Fast forward to The Movement Revisited: Much of the album consists of instrumental ensembles and soloists, but these are anchored in spoken word sections in which actors quote passages from speeches made by King, Parks, X and Ali. Wendell Pierce (The Wire, Treme) represents King. Dion Graham (Malcolm X, The Wire) plays X. Vondie Curtis-Hall (Chicago Hope, Daredevil) plays Ali. The only non-actor is the distinguished poet Sonia Sanchez, who plays Parks.
This is an epic work. There are glancing resonances with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra's Blood On The Fields (Columbia, 1997), but McBride tells his story in little over an hour, compared to the 3xCD set which Marsalis required. And do not mention Kamasi Washington. In that context, one is reminded of the 17th century mathematician Blaise Pascal's postscript to a correspondent: "I have made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." Then again, in defense of Marsalis and Washington, McBride has had over twenty years on this project.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-movement-revisited-a-musical-portrait-of-four-icons-mw0003338868
Review by Matt Collar
Drawing upon the words of legendary civil rights leaders Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and Muhammad Ali, Christian McBride offers a heartfelt large-ensemble tribute to the civil rights movement of the 1960s with 2020's The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons. The album is his third big-band recording, following his two Grammy-winning albums, 2011's The Good Feeling and 2017's Bringin' It. However, where those albums were robust and lively productions of post-bop jazz, The Movement Revisited is a more reverent and theatrical recording. Which isn't to say it's not harmonically rich with plenty of swinging improvisational intensity. The five-part work, which he first began performing in 1998 and has subsequently updated, spotlights McBride's multifaceted skills as a composer, arranger, and lyricist as he frames the uplifting words of these four heroes with his soulful arrangements. The recording culminates in the final movement "Apotheosis," celebrating the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States; an historic event that McBride beautifully ties directly to the civil rights and black power movements of the preceding decades. Helping bring the words of the civil rights leaders to life are narrators Wendell Pierce as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Vondie Curtis-Hall as Malcolm X, Sonia Sanchez as Rosa Parks, and Dion Graham as Muhammad Ali. Also showcased throughout are McBride's bandmates, including vibraphonist Warren Wolf, pianist Geoffrey Keezer, and drummer Terreon Gully, among others. While the album is orchestral in nature, all of the introductory prologues are stripped down, with McBride underlining the speaker's words with his dusky, bluesy basslines. "Sister Rosa - Prologue" also features Steve Wilson's wry flute accents. Conversely, on "Ali Speaks," McBride smartly hands the musical accompaniment over to drummer Gully, who offers a pugnacious counterpoint to Ali's swaggering vocal wit. Many of the tracks feature bright choral and gospel sections arranged with a modernist bent by J.D. Steele, a dynamic approach that evokes the edgy tonalities of '60s jazz and chamber albums like Andrew Hill's Lift Every Voice and Max Roach's It's Time. As McBride points out in his liner notes, this is a personal work filtered through the prism of his own life and his feelings about these four individuals. In that sense, it's not meant to be taken as a complete representation of the civil rights movement as a whole. It is however, a powerful and deeply considered work that invokes not just the words, but also the ebullient spirit of the civil rights movement.
https://downbeat.com/reviews/detail/the-movement-revisited-a-musical-portrait-of-four-icons
Christian McBride has been at work on The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait Of Four Icons in one way or another since 1998; the version heard here was recorded in 2013. So, a lot has changed in the States, as well as in music, since this document was made. An hourlong commemorative suite devoted to four heroes of the civil rights and Black Power movements, the album arrives in a nation reeling from the brutal backlash to its first black president.
When the suite soars, it follows the bandleader’s strengths. The leading upright bassist of his generation, McBride is known for his ebullient precision—his joy in the details—and for savoring the nectar inside swing rhythm. This comes through strongest in his small groups, though he ought to be more recognized for his broad-minded writing for jazz orchestra, too.
On Movement, a version of the Christian McBride Big Band joins up with the Voices of the Flame, a gospel choir, singing arrangements by J.D. Steele. The suite is organized into four overlapping sections devoted to Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King Jr. In each, an actor or poet reads from speeches or writings by the historical figure. Just as he blends musical styles—the overture, for instance, crescendos from stern piano chords to a passage of outright swing to a clave-inflected vamp—McBride laces together the stories of the four historical figures, always letting the words of one introduce the next.
In the past few years, it’s become common for jazz musicians to superimpose words over their music, making their ideals and inspirations more explicit. At the same time, McBride is speaking back to a canon of recordings from throughout jazz history that have relied on big bands and big voices to get a point across—Archie Shepp’s Attica Blues, Bobby Hutcherson’s Now!, Max Roach’s Percussion Bitter Sweet.
But to a degree, he misses an opportunity: Movement treats the music a bit too much like a text of its own. For all their precision, these arrangements feel more like background and less like a force.
https://www.npr.org/2016/02/04/465573376/christian-mcbrides-the-movement-revisited
56-Minute Listen
Jazz Night In America's regular host, Christian McBride, happens to be a Grammy-winning bassist and composer, but he forbade us to feature him unless it was for something special. It so happens that he's written a special work: Teaming with choral director JD Steele, he's composed a bluesy and soulful oratorio for big band, gospel choir with soloists, and four speakers who represent great figures of the Civil Rights Movement. It's called The Movement Revisited, and is inspired by the written words and speeches of Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., and President Barack Obama.
Jazz Night In America follows McBride around his own hometown of Philadelphia, as he speaks with the people who raised him at home and in the music, and features a performance of The Movement Revisited from the Kimmel Center in downtown Philly. NPR's Audie Cornish guest-hosts this episode, featuring the Christian McBride Big Band, the Philadelphia Heritage Chorale, and orators Sonia Sanchez, Rev. Alyn Waller, Dion Graham and Samuel Stricklen.

Christian McBride, bass;
Steve Wilson, alto saxophone, flute;
Todd Bashore, alto saxophone;
Ron Blake, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone;
Loren Schoenberg, tenor saxophone;
Carl Maraghi, baritone saxophone;
Michael Dease, Steve Davis, James Burton, trombone;
Doug Purviance, bass trombone;
Lew Soloff, Ron Tooley, Frank Greene, Freddie Hendrix, Darryl Shaw, trumpet;
Warren Wolf, vibraphone, tympani, tambourine;
Geoffrey Keezer, piano;
Terreon Gully, drums;
J.D. Steele: lead vocals (9, 12);
Alicia Olatuja: lead vocals (6);
Sonia Sanchez: narration;
Vondie Curtis-Hall: narration;
Dion Graham: narration;
Wendell Pierce: narration.
Voices Of The Flame: Marvel Allen, Shani P. Baker, Jeffrey S. Bolding, Jeff Hamer, Susann Miles, Deborah Newallo, Eunice Newkirk, Claudine Rucker, Trevor Smith, Melissa Walker.