the arts
BEYOND MONTCLAIR’S BORDERS
JHK also runs in-school and
after-school programs in Newark,
Elizabeth, Union, and other under-
served urban school districts, includ-
ing a new residency program in
Brownsville, Brooklyn, where 90
percent of high school students have
never had access to an instrument.
In total, Walker says, the Jazz House
organization reaches close to 2,000
students in the greater metropolitan
area with year-long programming.
Early on, Walker relied on big
Montclair donors, such as Rose and
John Cali, Rhonda and Bob Silver,
and Susan and Chris Gifford; more
recently, Janet Shapiro and Phillip
Byrd spearheaded the “Give an
Instrument” program. “Our first
supporters took a chance on us and
led the way for the broad-based
community support we’ve gotten,”
says Walker.
Walker traces her drive for
inclusiveness to her experiences as
the only child of color — with the
exception of her two sisters — in the
Edmonton, Canada, school system.
Her Italian-American mother
had fallen in love with her father, a
black All-American football player,
when the two were students at the
University of Michigan. Because
interracial marriage was illegal in
Michigan, the two eloped to Chicago
38
MAY 2019 MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE
PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD WINNERS For the second year in a row, the Montclair Jazz Festival won
the 2019 JerseyArts.com People’s Choice Award for Favorite Music Festival. Melissa Walker, fourth
from right, is flanked by Ted Chubb, Special Partnerships & Director, Jazz House Summer Workshop,
and Jennifer Verdonck, Director of Event Management, JHK.
WALKER AND McBRIDE: A DUO ON STAGE AND OFF
F
or Melissa Walker and Christian McBride, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight.
Throughout the ‘90s, the two occasionally crossed paths on the jazz circuit,
with Walker always playing second fiddle to the Grammy-winning bass player and
bandleader. “He’d be on the main stage, I’d be on the small side stage,” she says
with a laugh. “’He’d be going first class, I’d be going coach.”
Once, their separate bands were playing an overnight cruise out of Philadelphia,
McBride’s hometown. The cruise got started late, and to please the hometown crowd, she
says, “He played, and then I played....and then he played and he played and he played.”
Another time they were both performing at the Mount Hood Jazz Festival in Oregon,
McBride with his electric big band on the main stage and Walker on a smaller stage with her
acoustic trio. “Christian’s band was so loud that I actually stopped singing. I just sat down
and talked to the audience,” she says. “It wasn’t his fault they’d put us next to each other.
But when I saw him later I said, ‘Man, this is getting to be a thing, every time I see you I’m
getting worried.’”
The tone changed one evening in 2001. Both had separately attended an anti-war protest
in New York City days after the bombing of Iraq. Afterward, she went to hear a friend,
Ron Blake, currently in the Saturday Night Live band, at a jazz club in the city.
Turns out McBride’s friend Joey DeFrancesco was in the same band. “Christian walks in by
himself wearing a jean jacket covered in buttons,” she says. “There were only about eight of
us there, so we got to know each other in a more relaxed environment.”
They married in 2005 and moved into a house on Mountainside Park Terrace, Walker
from West Orange and McBride, reluctantly, from the Upper East Side.
Their new Montclair home fit McBride’s conditions for leaving New York perfectly,
Walker says: He wanted to be close enough to see the city from his house, and he needed
plenty of room for his “three acoustic basses, umpteen electric basses and thousands of
CDs and records.”
The house, which backs up to Mills Reservation, also provided the woodsy feel Walker
needed. “Christian could sit in the front and see the city; I could sit in the back and feel like
I was in Canada,” she says. “We were happy as two peas in a pod.”
From the start, McBride “loved Jazz House Kids and loved what it stood for,” she says.
Which was a good thing, because at the beginning, JHK operated out of the couple’s guest
bedroom.
“I had a sign on the back door that said ‘Jazz House Kids,’ “ she says. “When we had a
meeting, I had to remember to tell Christian ahead of time and remind him to make sure
he got dressed.”
headquarters on Bloomfield Avenue.
They also get lots of practice in “the
critical art of doing,” Walker says,
playing in Montclair and New York
City; this includes gigs at Dizzy’s
Club Coca Cola at Lincoln Center
every August and, this mid-April,
at the City Winery for the Jazz
House Kids’ first Spring Gala. Ravi
Coltrane, Jimmy Coltrane, Jimmy
Cobb, Ledisi and Ingrid Jensen also
performed.
About 40 percent of Jazz House
students get financial support, and,
though students audition, they only
do so to find where they fit among
the program’s six levels.
“We never turn a student away,”
says Walker.