Christian McBride bringing 'The Movement Revisited' to Cleveland via Tri-C

Feb. 7—On the website of prolific jazz bassist and bandleader Christian McBride, you'll see a number of upcoming performances but only a couple, including a show in Northeast Ohio, that are labeled as "The Movement Revisited."

He can't just show up and play the music from the album of that name from 2020 without a lot of legwork being done first..

"It's a very big project," McBride says during a recent phone interview from his home outside New York City in New Jersey. "There's a lot of people on stage — you know, a 17-piece big band, there's a gospel choir, there are four narrators, there's a lead vocalist standing in front — so this is not something that you could just book over the weekend."

Having recently presented the show in Chicago, McBride is slated to perform the work on Feb. 10 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center in Cleveland as part of the Cuyahoga Community College's 2023-2024 Performing Arts Series. He'll also perform it in Charlotte, North Carolina, later in February, which is Black History Month.

"Christian is a dynamic and accomplished performer who brings a phenomenal sense of storytelling through music," says Terri Pontremoli, director of the Tri-C Performing Arts Series, in a news release from Tri-C. "'The Movement Revisited' is a deep and powerful work, and we're thrilled to present it in Cleveland.'"

In press materials from McBride's camp, "The Movement Revisited" is described as "a sweeping four-part suite celebrating the civil rights movement" that, along with all the musicians, makes use of four narrators "who convey the pain, pathos and, ultimately, hope of the struggle through the words and writings of four iconic figures." On the album, Sonia Sanchez presents the words of Rosa Parks, Vondie Curtis-Hall of Malcolm X, Dion Graham of Muhammad Ali and, last but not least, Wendell Pierce of Martin Luther King Jr.

It was recorded several years before its release because, McBride says, it took an extended period to obtain all the clearances from the estates of the four icons to use their words.

"I knew it was going to take some amount of time, but I didn't think it was going to take six and a half or seven years," he says.

The original plan was to play it for the family of Barack Obama during his presidency.

"And, of course, that wound up not happening," McBride says, "but I'm glad the recording finally saw the light of day."

After much of the album was written but before it was recorded, the Detroit Jazz Festival — then led by Pontremoli, who now directs Cleveland's Tri-C JazzFest — asked him to expand the work with a suite that would include the then-newly elected Obama. The result is the album's final track, "Apotheosis, November 4th, 2008," in which the aforementioned historical figures quote from Obama's victory speech.

"I thought the magnitude of his being elected was one of the most significant things that has happened in our lifetime," McBride says.

When McBride does take "The Movement Revisited" on the road, he says he typically brings his rhythm section and section leaders with him, with the rest of the on-stage folks being local performers. That includes the narrators, and he says that for the Cleveland show, he pretty much left the selections up to his good friend Pontremoli.

"Terri — I trust that she knows that piece well enough, that she knows people locally that will fit the bill perfectly," he says.

The narrators for the Cleveland performance are Tasha Baston, spouse of Tri-C President Michael A. Baston, voicing Parks; WKYC-TV 3 anchor Leon Bibb, King; WJW-TV 8 anchor Wayne Dawson, Ali; former state representative and actor Peter Lawson Jones, Malcolm X; and Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Obama.

McBride says he doesn't expect narrators cast for any performance to mimic the icons, as that isn't what their counterparts on the album did.

"Nobody wants to hear that," he says. "It's the message that's important, and (what's needed is) the best delivery someone can give."

So, just to be clear, McBride didn't consider, say, calling up Pierce, best known for acting in the TV series "The Wire" and "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan," and asking him to meet him in Cleveland?

"I mean, that has happened, but Wendell is always busy," McBride says.

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"The great part about it is wherever we perform this piece, there really is a sense of having the local community truly involved," he says. "When I did Chicago, we used a local Chicago choir. We used local narrators. We used members of the Chicago Jazz Orchestra. In Cleveland, you know we'll be using a local choir, using local narrators. And then when we do it in Charlotte, it'll be the same thing. It really brings the community together in a very far-reaching (way)."

McBride has released three albums since "The Movement Revisited" and in March will offer the world "But Who's Gonna Play The Melody?" — an album consisting only of him and fellow bassist Edgar Meyer performing together.

"It's about as polar-opposite from 'The Moment Revisited' as you can imagine," he says.

In his early 50s, McBride wasn't around for the civil rights movements but says he has loved reading about it and about groups such as the Black Panthers. He says he sees some parallels between that time and today.

"There's so much unrest across the board, not just with African-Americans but with the Jewish-American community, with the Palestinian community, with women — with the new women's movement," he says. "Everywhere you turn, people are angry.

"('The Movement Revisited') is simply sort of a story being told, of 'Once upon a time, this is what we were fighting for,' and it led to a lot of breakthroughs that we have benefited from. But even though we've benefited from many of these breakthroughs, there are still a lot of injustices that go on today," McBride continues. "Maybe you should look at ... these four icons that we celebrate to look at the blueprint on how to break those barriers down."

Christian McBride: 'The Movement Revisited'

When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 10.

Where: Maltz Performing Arts Center, 1855 Ansel Road, Cleveland.

Tickets: $35 for general admission; free for Tri-C students with ID.

Info: Tri-C.edu/performingarts.