Christian McBride Trio To Anchor Mack Avenue SuperBand Tour

Ever since its debut in 2012, the Mack Avenue SuperBand has become a staple of the Detroit Jazz Festival. Now the jazz supergroup is taking it on the road in support of their latest release, Live from the Detroit Jazz Festival 2015. Both the album and the tour are anchored by bass master and musical director Christian McBride. His bandmates for the tour include pianist Christian Sands, trumpeters Sean Jones and Dominick Farinacci, drummer Carl Allen, saxophonists Tia Fuller and Kirk Whalum, and vibraphonist Gary Burton.

“The members of the SuperBand represent a diverse range of generations and styles,” the label writes. “It offers a rare opportunity, for instance, to hear NEA Jazz Master Gary Burton engage with a group of younger players with more of a hard-bop focus than he usually encounters in his own more modern-leaning bands. The 2015 concert recording features pieces penned by six of the seven members and fully emphasizes the idea of Mack Avenue as a family label. This mentality harkens back to an older era of jazz and the Mack Avenue SuperBand hopes to maintain this by bringing it on tour.”

McBride, Sands, Allen, and Fuller will be on every tour date, while each of the other members will be featured on most but not all concerts. The trek takes the band down the East Coast, across the MidWest, and finally up the West Coast with a string of dates in California and Washington.

“I’m looking forward to playing some of the music that we played in Detroit and a lot more and seeing where it goes,” McBride said. “These bands change a little bit every year and we already know that this is not going to be a permanent group, so we just want to have as much fun as we can while we’re together.”

Mack Avenue SuperBand 2016 Tour Dates: