Jazu Harlem in Conversation: Christian McBride and Ron Carter
Join us for a special conversation with jazz icons Ron Carter and Christian McBride, hosted by award-winning journalist and author Nate Chinen, as they reflect on their long-standing connections to Japan.
The discussion will highlight their experiences touring, recording, and collaborating within Japan’s jazz community, and how the country’s deep appreciation for the music has influenced their artistic journeys.
This event offers a thoughtful look at the cultural exchange that has shaped both musicians’ careers and helped sustain their creative growth.
6:00pm – Sake Reception
7:30pm – Event Begins
This event is made possible with support from the United States – Japan Foundation.
ABOUT JAZU HARLEM:
Jazu Harlem is the National Jazz Museum in Harlem’s special project designed to celebrate the vibrant and evolving legacy of jazz music, intertwining the cultural tapestries of historic Harlem, New York City and the nation of Japan.
Beginning in October 2024, and over the next four years, Jazu Harlem will feature collaborative concerts with musicians from New York City and Japan, hosted at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, the Japan Society, International House of Japan, and various partner venues in both New York City and Japan. Select performances will be livestreamed to affiliated venues across the United States and Japan.
The Jazu Harlem series will also include artist meet-and-greets, Harlem Speaks Oral History interviews, exchange concert tours in Japan and New York, and a major concert event aligned with the 2026 United Nations General Assembly.
Key partners for Jazu Harlem include the United States-Japan Foundation, Japan Society, International House of Japan, NYC Parks, Brooklyn Kura, Proper Sake and more.
Ron Carter
RON CARTER is among the most original, prolific, and influential bassists in jazz. He has recorded over 2200 albums, and has a Guinness world record to prove it!
In Jazz: From 1963 to 1968, he was a member of the acclaimed Miles Davis Quintet. Over his 60 year career, he has recorded with so many of the jazz greats greats: Lena Horne, Bill Evans, B.B. King, Dexter Gordon, Wes Montgomery, Bobby Timmons, Eric Dolphy, Cannonball Adderley and Jaki Byard to name a few. He can be heard on many iconic jazz records of the 60’s and 70’s such as Speak No Evil, Maiden Voyage, Red Clay, Speak Like a Child, Nefertiti and Miles Smiles, to name a few.
In other genres: After leaving the quintet he embarked on a prolific 50-year free lance career that spanned vastly different music genres and continues to this day. He recorded with Roberta Flack, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bette Midler and Aretha Franklin, appeared on the seminal hip-hop album Low End Theory with a Tribe Called Quest, wrote and recorded pieces for string quartets and Bach chorales for 2-8 basses and accompanied Danny Simmons on a spoken word album.
As a leader: Carter continues to do worldwide tours with his various groups. The Golden Striker Carter Trio, The Foursight quartet, the Ron Carter Nonet and Ron Carter’s Great Big Band. He has recorded multiple albums with his groups.
As an author: Carter shares his expertise in the series of books he authored, where he explains his creative process and teaches bassists of all levels to improve their skills and develop their own unique sound.
His books share a unique feature he pioneered, that of including QR codes in every book that lead to additional material, enrighing the text and making each book that much more valuable.
He also penned his autobiography “Finding the Right Notes” which is available in print and e-book and also as an audiobook read by the Maestro himself.
As a teacher: Carter has lectured, conducted, and performed at clinics and master classes, instructing jazz ensembles and teaching the business of music at numerous universities. He was Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Studies while it was located in Boston and, after 18 years on the faculty of the Music Department of The City College of New York, he is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He also taught at the Juilliard School and at Manhattan School of Music.
In film scoring: In addition to scoring and arranging music for many films, including some projects for Public Broadcasting System, Carter composed music for A Gathering of Old Men, starring Lou Gosset Jr., The Passion of Beatrice directed by Bertrand Tavernier, and Blind Faith starring Courtney B. Vance.
Film appearances: In 2022 PBS premiered the full-lenth feature film documentary of Carter’s Live and Legend “Finding the Right Notes. Many jazz documentaries feature the Maestro because of his indelible contribution to the genre including Ken Burns’ Jazz, “Birth of the Cool” about Miles Davis, “It Must be Schwing”, the story of the Blue Note and many more. He also appeared as himself in HBO’s hit series “Treme” and was the bassist on soundtracks of Twin Peaks, Bird, and way too many others to mention.
Education: Carter earned a bachelor of music degree from the Eastman School in Rochester and a master’s degree in double bass from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City.
Christian McBride
Raised in Philadelphia, a city steeped in soul, Christian McBride moved to New York in 1989 to pursue classical studies at the Juilliard School. There he was promptly recruited to the road by saxophonist Bobby Watson. Call it a change in curriculum: a decade’s worth of study through hundreds of recording sessions and countless gigs with an ever-expanding circle of musicians. He was finding his voice, and others were learning to listen for it.
In 2000 the lessons of the road came together in the formation of what would become his longest-running project, the Christian McBride Band. Praised by writer Alan Leeds as “one of the most intoxicating, least predictable bands on the scene today,” the CMB—saxophonist Ron Blake, keyboardist Geoffrey Keezer, and drummer Terreon Gully—have been collectively evolving McBride’s all-inclusive, forward-thinking outlook on music through their incendiary live shows, as chronicled on 2006’s Live at Tonic. Part excursion, part education, the CMB is a vehicle built on a framework of experience and powered by unfettered creativity: a mesmerizing dance on the edge of an electro-acoustic fault line.
In 2009 McBride began focusing this same energy through a more traditional lens with the debut of his critically-acclaimed Inside Straight quintet, and again with the Christian McBride Big Band, whose 2012 release The Good Feeling won the GRAMMY for Best Large Ensemble Jazz Album. As his career entered its third decade, McBride added the role of mentor, tapping rising stars pianist Christian Sands and drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. for the Christian McBride Trio’s GRAMMY-nominated album Out Here.
He is also a respected educator and advocate, first noted in 1997 when he spoke on former President Bill Clinton’s town hall meeting “Racism in the Performing Arts.” He has since been named Artistic Director of the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Summer Sessions (2000), co-director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem (2005), and the Second Creative Chair for Jazz of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association (2005).
In 1998 he combined roles, composing “The Movement, Revisited,” a four-movement suite dedicated to four of the major figures of the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The piece was commissioned by the Portland (ME) Arts Society and the National Endowment for the Arts, and performed throughout New England in the fall of 1998 with McBride’s quartet and a 30-piece gospel choir. For its tenth anniversary, “The Movement, Revisited” was expanded, rewritten, and revamped to feature an 18-piece big band and four actors/speakers in addition to the gospel choir. It was performed in Los Angeles at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and praised by the Los Angeles Times as “a work that was admirable—to paraphrase Dr. King—for both the content of its music and the character of its message.”
Currently he hosts and produces “The Lowdown: Conversations With Christian” on SiriusXM satellite radio and National Public Radio’s “Jazz Night in America,” a weekly radio show and multimedia collaboration between WBGO, NPR and Jazz at Lincoln Center, showcasing outstanding live jazz from across the country. With his staggering body of work, McBride is the ideal host, drawing on history, experience, and a gift for storytelling to bridge the gap between artist, music, and audience. He brings that same breadth of experience to bear as Artistic Advisor for Jazz Programming at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC).
Completing the circle is his work with Jazz House Kids, the nationally recognized community arts organization founded by his wife, vocalist Melissa Walker. Exclusively dedicated to educating children through jazz, the “Jazz House” concept brings internationally renowned jazz performers to teach alongside a professional staff, offering students a wide range of creative programming that develops musical potential, enhances leadership skills, and strengthens academic performance. This shared celebration of America’s original musical art form cultivates tomorrow’s community leaders and global citizens while preserving its rich legacy for future generations.
Whether behind the bass or away from it, Christian McBride is always of the music. From jazz (Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Rollins, J.J. Johnson, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, to R&B (Isaac Hayes, Chaka Khan, Natalie Cole, Lalah Hathaway, and the one and only Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown) to pop/rock (Sting, Paul McCartney, Carly Simon, Don Henley, Bruce Hornsby) to hip-hop/neo-soul (The Roots, D’Angelo, Queen Latifah) to classical (Kathleen Battle, Edgar Meyer, Shanghai Quartet, Sonus Quartet), he is a luminary with one hand ever reaching for new heights, and the other extended in fellowship—and perhaps the hint of a challenge—inviting us to join him.
Nate Chinen
Nate Chinen has been writing about music for more than twenty-five years.
He spent a dozen of them working as a critic for The New York Times, and helmed a long-running column for JazzTimes. As editorial director content at WRTI, a Classical and Jazz station in Philadelphia, he contributes a range of coverage to NPR Music.
A thirteen-time winner of the Helen Dance–Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, presented by the Jazz Journalists Association, Chinen is also coauthor of Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, the 2003 autobiography of festival impresario and producer George Wein.
His work appears in Best Music Writing 2011, Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt (Duke University Press, 2012), and Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History (Voyageur Press, 2012).
Chinen was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He started his career as a music critic in 1996, at the Philadelphia City Paper. There he covered one of the great jazz cities at ground level, writing a steady stream of reviews and features, along with a biweekly column, The Gig.
He moved to New York City in 1998, and began writing for a range of publications, including DownBeat, Blender and Vibe. For several years he was the jazz critic for Weekend America, a syndicated radio program. He covered jazz for the Village Voice from 2003 through 2005, when he became a regular contributor to The New York Times. Around the same time, he revived The Gig as a column for JazzTimes, where it ran in 125 consecutive installments.
From 2017 to 2022, Chinen served as director of editorial content at WBGO — managing the station’s full spectrum of editorial coverage, contributing to NPR Music, and joining radio veteran Greg Bryant as co-creator and co-host of Jazz United, which won the JJA’s award for Podcast of the Year in each of its two seasons. Chinen also served as consulting producer with Jazz Night in America, a multimedia program hosted by Christian McBride.
At WRTI, Chinen oversees coverage of both jazz and classical music, across digital platforms. He continues to contribute to NPR Music, where he served as a judge in the 2022 Tiny Desk Contest.
