Norah Jones and Christian McBride make music for Montclair's Jazz House Kids

Norah Jones and Christian McBride jammed together at the annual benefit for the Montclair nonprofit Jazz House Kids at the Ralph Pucci showrooms in Manhattan Monday night.

It was the first time the two jazz legends performed together. 

"What took us so long?" joked McBride, the 7-time Grammy-winning jazz bassist, as they riffed on jazz standards "Cold, Cold Heart," "The Nearness of You" and "Ease on Down the Road."

In between set pieces, Jones, a singer, songwriter and pianist who has herself collected 9 Grammys and sold 50 millions albums worldwide, including her 2002 debut record Come Away With Me, talked about her path to success.

The daughter of Ravi Shankar, who popularized Indian sitar music, she was born in New York City and moved to Texas when she was seven. She attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas and the University of North Texas before moving back to New York City, where she got her start as a lounge singer.

Her first job in New York, she said, was at a restaurant where she was paid $20 to play from 3 to 5 p.m. She found restaurant gigs helpful as "paid practice," since, she said, "no one is listening."  

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The annual event also featured performances from young musicians trained through the Montclair non-profit. 

Jazz House Kids founder Melissa Walker, who is married to McBride, spoke of the group's struggle to continue their music education mission during the pandemic.

"We flipped our whole program online," she said. "But that meant a whole lot of kids staying home and fighting anxiety and depression and loneliness, and if you're a musician, you miss your band, your tribe."

Still, the group has continued its mission of music education though its Montclair education space, and by bringing instruments and instruction to disadvantaged districts in the New York area, from Newark, New Jersey, to Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Recently, the nonprofit brought nearly 60 instruments to a school in Paterson that had been without music education for a decade.

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"We have young people playing for the first time," Walker said. "We know if we do that and repeat it over and over, we can inform kids, create bonds with peers and instructors who believe in them, and we can pave the way for their future. 

"Playing it forward, that's what Jazz House is all about."  

Julia Martin is the 2021 recipient of the New Jersey Society for Professional Journalists' David Carr award for her coverage of Montclair for NorthJersey.com.

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Email: jmartin@gannettnj.com

Twitter: @TheWriteJulia