Christian McBride hands “Old Folks” to Samara Joy

Christian McBride talks about his own genre like a man who has watched it lock itself in from the inside. Introducing the new track, he said something worth keeping: jazz can burrow so far into its own vacuum that it forgets the thing that matters most — emotion. Out of that came “Old Folks”, the second single from the big band album “Without Further Ado, Vol. 1”, due August 29 on Mack Avenue.

He gave the ballad to Samara Joy. She says she listened to what Carmen McRae and Ernestine Anderson had done with it, then stepped away from both. Asked what the song is about, she answers without sentiment: it can be several people you carry around, and they do not have to be family. McBride is shorter about her — he says she can move a room.

The album runs to eight tracks and a guest list longer than some festival bills: Dianne Reeves, José James, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Jeffrey Osborne, Antoinette Henry. The previous single was stranger still. “Murder By Numbers” has Sting and Andy Summers on it, which is two thirds of The Police walking into a big band carrying their own song.

The interesting part is the arithmetic. A big band is the loudest possible way to say something quiet: a stage full of players, every one of whom spends most of the song not playing so that a single voice has somewhere to stand. On a ballad the arranger's work is measured by what he takes out, not by what he adds. When it works, you stop hearing the orchestra and hear only the person being sung about. When it doesn't, you hear the arrangement.