The Monterey Jazz Festival’s Artist-In-Residence works year-round with young musicians in performances and clinics at our Next Generation Festival, Summer Jazz Camp, and at the Monterey Jazz Festival. This year’s Artist-In-Residence, Christian McBride, joins jazz luminaries and past Artists-In-Residence Branford Marsalis, Regina Carter, Kurt Elling and Terence Blanchard in this important and vital role.

Mr. McBride will act as a clinician and performer during the Next Generation Festival, including MJF's 38th Annual National High School Jazz Competition, April 3-6, 2008. He will mentor students at the MJF Summer Jazz Camp in June 2008 and perform with the Next Generation Jazz Orchestra at the Monterey Jazz Festival presented by Verizon, September 19-21, 2008.

Christian McBride is a devoted jazz educator and mentor. He is the Artistic Director at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass summer program, the Co-Director of The Jazz Museum in Harlem, and is Creative Chair for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Past Artistic Director and residency positions include stints at the Henry Mancini and Brubeck Institutes, the Berklee College of Music, and Stanford Jazz Workshop.

ABOUT CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE
The Grammy Award winning bassist has been at the forefront of jazz since he emerged as part of the talented generation of players that took the genre by storm in the early 1990s. Born in 1972 in Philadelphia, Christian began playing electric bass at age 9, mentored by his father and great uncle. After studying both jazz and classical music at Philadelphia’s High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Christian was awarded a partial scholarship to attend the Juilliard School in New York City in 1989. Almost immediately upon his arrival in New York, McBride began working with saxophonist Bobby Watson's Horizon and started working at clubs with John Hicks, Kenny Barron, Larry Willis and Gary Bartz. After one year at Juilliard, McBride decided to leave school to tour with trumpeter Roy Hargrove. From that moment, McBride began a remarkable ascent to the top ranks of the music industry; many top jazz artists recognized his virtuoso status, such as trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, Superbass (with Ray Brown and John Clayton), Pat Metheny, Joshua Redman and many others.

During the 1990s, Christian recorded close to 150 albums as a sideman for such artists as Joe Henderson, Betty Carter, Roy Haynes, Benny Green, Kathleen Battle, Diana Krall, Dave Brubeck, Jimmy Smith, Joe Lovano, McCoy Tyner, George Duke, and many more, as well as appearing onscreen in Robert Altman's 1940s period film, Kansas City. Signed to Verve in 1994, McBride released four records as a leader, including Gettin' to It, Number Two Express, A Family Affair and SCI-FI.  

In the new century, McBride continued to expand his scope of live and recorded performances with Sting, George Duke, Chick Corea, Chris Botti, John Scofield, Jim Hall, and dozens more. In 2004, he won a Grammy Award for his participation on McCoy Tyner’s Illuminations, and he undertook his first pop Musical Directorship for Carly Simon’s Christmas show featuring gospel royalty BeBe Winans. In 2006, McBride performed with the Godfather of Soul, James Brown at the Hollywood Bowl, and in 2007, he recorded with and acted as Musical Director for Queen Latifah, presented Charles Mingus’ “Epitaph” in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, and performed with Sonny Rollins and Roy Haynes at a 50th Anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall.

Confounding the purists by embracing the funky and electrified sounds of his youth, McBride has also pushed the boundaries of jazz with the Philadelphia Experiment (with The Roots’ drummer and high school classmate ?uestlove, Uri Caine and Pat Martino) and has released two recordings, Vertical Vision and Live at Tonic with his own group, the Christian McBride Band. Christian has also cultivated new sounds with his eclectic, anything-goes-electro-acoustic Christian McBride Situation, which can include DJs as well as traditional instruments.

McBride is also a talented composer/arranger and has written dozens of tunes and has received commissions from such entities as Jazz at Lincoln Center ("Bluesin' in Alphabet City," performed by Wynton Marsalis with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra) and the National Endowment for the Arts (“The Movement, Revisited,” a dramatic musical portrait of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s written and arranged for quartet and a 30-piece gospel choir.)

Beginning in 1994, Christian has performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival five times: with Ray Brown, Pat Metheny, the Brubeck Institute, the Christian McBride Situation, the Christian McBride Quintet, and with Dave Brubeck in 2002, celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the “Real Ambassadors.”