Christian McBride & Ursa Major Release New Single “Cows” | LISTEN!
11x GRAMMY® Award-Winning
Christian McBride & Ursa Major Release New Single
“Cows”
Highly Anticipated Debut Album Points of Light
Out October 30 via Mack Avenue Records
Produced by 8x GRAMMY® Nominated Terrace Martin
(Kendrick Lamar, Kamasi Washington, Snoop Dogg)
September 29, 2026: Today, GRAMMY® Award-winning bassist, composer, and bandleader Christian McBride released “Cows,” the second single from Points of Light, the debut album from his newest ensemble Ursa Major. Produced by Terrace Martin (Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock), the album will be released October 30 via Mack Avenue Records. With the newest single written by the ensemble’s guitarist Ely Perlman, the group features an extraordinary lineup of next-generation jazz musicians, including saxophonist Nicole Glover, drummer Savannah Harris, and pianist Mike King.
Over the years, Christian McBride has led a number of vibrant bands, each with its own singular identity — from the vintage acoustic jazz of Inside Straight and the boisterous swing of the Christian McBride Big Band to the classic rhythm section sound of the Christian McBride Trio, the experimental audacity of New Jawn, and his sweeping Civil Rights opus The Movement Revisited. But McBride found himself missing the anything-and-everything-goes freedom of a band that could weave together those multifarious strands. So in 2022, he began assembling the quintet that came to be known as Ursa Major, with that expansive vision in mind. “I had been itching to put together a new band, what I like to call a ‘hybrid band,’ for some time,” McBride explains. “I didn’t know at first what form that band would take, but I knew that it had to be a young band.”
The resulting quintet brings together drummer Savannah Harris, saxophonist Nicole Glover, guitarist Ely Perlman, and pianist Mike King — four young musicians McBride selected for their flexibility, fearlessness and individuality. Harris was recommended by a number of colleagues as someone who could bring the swing, funk and freedom McBride was looking for, while Glover came to his attention through the musicians’ grapevine as “one of the most heralded voices in jazz.” Perlman caught McBride’s ear at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass summer program, where McBride serves as Artistic Director, and King emerged as the unanimous recommendation of Harris and Glover when McBride asked them to suggest potential pianists.
Ursa Major’s debut album, Points of Light, captures the boundless spirit that has defined the band from the beginning. The title reflects the luminous individuality McBride sees in his bandmates. “I have four young stars here,” he recalls thinking. For the album’s sonic direction, McBride called in multi-instrumentalist, singer, rapper, and producer Terrace Martin, whose boundary-stretching approach bridges the band’s jazz foundation with McBride’s deep history across funk, soul, hip-hop, and pop. Martin captured the band’s live feel in the studio before adding a layer of studio wizardry alongside GRAMMY-winning producer and multi-instrumentalist Quintin Gulledge, incorporating synths, keyboards and vocoder without interfering with the sound, vibe and camaraderie the group had forged onstage. The album consists of original contributions from every member of the band, with the sole cover — George Duke’s 1992 single “No Rhyme, No Reason” — arising spontaneously from conversations in the control room.
“This album is basically an extension of what we’ve been doing live for the last four years,” McBride concludes. “It’s been fun to watch a band develop and grow and progress when everything is so wide open. They don’t say no to anything, which is a wonderful thing.”
Photo Credit: Evelyn Freja
Missing Piece Group