Terence Blanchard

Terence Blanchard
Terence Blanchard performing in July 2008.
Background information
Born	(1962-03-13) March 13, 1962
Origin	New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Genres	Modern jazz, hard bop
Occupation(s)	Musician bandleader composer arranger film score writer
Instruments	Trumpet piano
Years active	1980 – present
Labels	Blue Note (present) Sony Classical Columbia
Associated acts	Art Blakey Donald Harrison Branford Marsalis Bill Lee Terence Blanchard Quintet featuring Brice Winston Fabian Almazan Joshua Crumbly Kendrick Scott
Website	TerenceBlanchard.com

External video

Oral History, Terence Blanchard reflects on the journey of playing jazz. Interview date March 21, 2015, NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Oral History Library

Terence Oliver Blanchard (born March 13, 1962) is an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, arranger, and film score composer.

Since Blanchard emerged on the scene in 1980 with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and then shortly thereafter with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, he has been a leading artist in jazz. He was an integral figure in the 1980s jazz resurgence, having recorded several award-winning albums and having performed with the jazz elite.

He is known as a straight-ahead artist in the hard bop tradition but has recently developed an African-fusion style of playing that makes him unique from other trumpeters on the performance circuit. It is as a film composer that Blanchard reaches his widest audience. His trumpet can be heard on nearly fifty film scores; more than forty bear his compositional style.

Since 2000, Blanchard has served as artistic director at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. As of August 2011, he was named the artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami Frost School of Music. In the fall of 2015 he was named a visiting scholar in jazz composition at Berklee College of Music. He lives in the Garden District of New Orleans with his wife and four children.

Life and career

The Jazz Messengers of 1985, from left: Jean Toussaint, Blanchard, Donald Harrison and Lonnie Plaxico

Blanchard was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the only child to parents Wilhelmina and Joseph Oliver Blanchard, a part-time opera singer and insurance company manager.^[1] Blanchard began playing piano at the age of five and then the trumpet at age eight upon hearing Alvin Alcorn play. Blanchard played trumpet recreationally alongside childhood friend Wynton Marsalis in summer music camps but showed no real proficiency on the instrument.

Then, while in high school, he began studying at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) under Roger Dickerson and Ellis Marsalis, Jr.. From 1980 to 1982, Blanchard studied under jazz saxophonist Paul Jeffrey and trumpeter Bill Fielder at Rutgers University, while touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. In 1982, Wynton Marsalis recommended Blanchard to replace him in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and until 1986, Blanchard was the band's trumpeter and musical director. With Blakey and as co-leader of a quintet with saxophonist Donald Harrison and pianist Mulgrew Miller, Blanchard rose to prominence as a key figure in the 1980s Jazz Resurgence. The Harrison/Blanchard group recorded five albums from 1984-1988 until Blanchard left to pursue a solo career in 1990.^[2]

In the 1990s, after a laborious but successful embouchure change, Blanchard was as busy as ever. He recorded his self-titled debut for Columbia Records which reached third on the Billboard Jazz Charts. After performing on soundtracks for Spike Lee movies, including Do the Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues, Lee wanted Blanchard to compose the scores for his films beginning with "Jungle Fever" (1991). Blanchard has written the score for every Spike Lee film since including, Malcolm X, Clockers, Summer of Sam, 25th Hour, Inside Man.

In 2006, he composed the score for Spike Lee's 4-hour Hurricane Katrina documentary for HBO entitled When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Blanchard also appeared in front of the camera with his mother to share their emotional journey back to find her home completely destroyed. Blanchard had also created an album titled A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina) in which he had recreated some pieces used in the documentary, as well as created more pieces, to provide audiences with the opportunity to sympathize with those who were affected by Hurricane Katrina.^[3]

Blanchard has also composed for other directors, including Leon Ichaso, Ron Shelton and Kasi Lemmons. With over forty scores to his credit, Blanchard is the most prolific jazz musician to ever compose for movies. Entertainment Weekly proclaimed Blanchard "central to a general resurgence of jazz composition for film." Yet in a 1994 interview for Down Beat, Blanchard was quoted as saying, "Writing for film is fun, but nothing can beat being a jazz musician, playing a club, playing a concert".^[4]

All the while, Blanchard has remained true to his jazz roots as a trumpeter and bandleader on the performance circuit. He has recorded several award-winning albums for Columbia, Sony Classical and Blue Note Records, including In My Solitude: The Billie Holiday Songbook (1994), Romantic Defiance (1995), The Heart Speaks (1996), Wandering Moon (2000), Let's Get Lost (2001) and Flow (2005), which was produced by pianist Herbie Hancock and received two Grammy Award nominations.

Terence Blanchard's 2001 CD Let's Get Lost was his most commercially successful album to date. It features new arrangements of classic songs written by Jimmy McHugh and performed by his own quintet along with the leading ladies of jazz vocals: Diana Krall, Jane Monheit, Dianne Reeves, and Cassandra Wilson.

In 2005, Blanchard was part of the ensemble that won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for his participation on McCoy Tyner’s Illuminations, an award he shared with Tyner, Gary Bartz, Christian McBride and Lewis Nash.

Blanchard was a judge for the 5th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.^[5] In 2009 in the Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog, Blanchard played all of the alligator Louis’ trumpet parts. He also voiced the role of Earl the bandleader in the riverboat band.^[6]

Print biography

In December 2002, Scarecrow Press published Contemporary Cat: Terence Blanchard with Special Guests, an authorized biography of Blanchard written by Anthony Magro.
The book is the 42nd title in the publisher's well-regarded "Series In Jazz" headed by editors Dan Morgenstern and Edward Berger.

"Written in an intimate, conversational style, Contemporary Cat: Terence Blanchard with Special Guests begins in the birthplace of jazz, Blanchard's hometown, New Orleans. His family and famous musician teachers speak of a disciplined youngster who matured alongside the Marsalis brothers and saxophonist Donald Harrison to become a leader in the important 1980s jazz resurgence."^[7]

Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz

In the fall of 2000, Terence Blanchard was named artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the University of Southern California. Herbie Hancock serves as chairman; Wayne Shorter, Clark Terry and Jimmy Heath sit on the board of trustees. The conservatory offers an intensive, tuition-free, two-year master's program to a limited number of students (only up to eight per every two years).

In his role as artistic director, Blanchard works with the students in the areas of artistic development, arranging, composition, and career counseling. He also participates in master classes and community outreach activities associated with the program. "Out of my desire to give something back to the jazz community, I wanted to get involved. In fact, I've always said that if I wasn't a musician, that I would like to be a teacher. So I was glad to get involved and to be a part of this unique program that fosters such an open and accessible environment."^[2]

In April 2007, the Institute announced its "Commitment to New Orleans" initiative which includes the relocation of the program to the campus of Loyola University New Orleans from Los Angeles. Blanchard had passionately lobbied the Institute to relocate saying, "After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was shaken and its musical roots were threatened. I grew up in this city and learned about jazz here at Loyola with other young jazz musicians like Wynton and Branford Marsalis and I know that the Institute will have a great impact on jazz and in our communities. We are going to work hard to help jazz and New Orleans flourish once again."^[8]

Other work

Composer Terence Blanchard and his wife, Robin Burgess, at the world premiere of his opera Champion on 15 June 2013.

In 2007, the Monterey Jazz Festival named Blanchard Artist-In-Residence, citing him as "one his generation’s most artistically mature and innovative artists and a committed supporter of jazz education."^[9] The Monterey Jazz Festival 50th Anniversary Band featuring Blanchard on trumpet will make a 54-date, 10-week tour of the United States from January 8, 2008 to March 16, 2008. Rounding out the band will be saxophonist James Moody, pianist Benny Green, bassist Derrick Hodge and drummer Kendrick Scott. The special ensemble will also feature jazz singer Nnenna Freelon.

In December 2007, the Terence Blanchard Quintet performed the movie music of Spike Lee and Terence Blanchard with an orchestra and singers Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kurt Elling, and Raul Midón at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.^[10]

In November 2008 he was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.^[11]

On February 10, 2008, Blanchard won his first Grammy Award as a bandleader for A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina) in the category of Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. His two other Grammy Awards were as a sideman for Art Blakey (1984) and McCoy Tyner (2004).

Blanchard composed original music for Stephen Adly Guirgis's Broadway play The Motherfucker With the Hat, which premiered at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on April 11, 2011.^[12][13][14] The show is described as "a high-octane verbal cage match about love, fidelity and misplaced haberdashery."^[15]

On January 20, 2012, the film Red Tails was released nationwide in the United States. Blanchard served as the composer of the original score, marking the first time he has worked with executive producer George Lucas.

He composed incidental music for the 2012 Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.

He released Magnetic May 28, 2013 on Blue Note Records.

On June 15, 2013, Blanchard premiered his first opera, Champion, with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. It is about the life of prize fighting boxer Emile Griffith from St. Thomas, with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Cristofer. It stars Denyce Graves, Aubrey Allicock, Robert Orth, and Arthur Woodley.

Blanchard's album, Breathless, with his new band, The E-Collective, was released by Blue Note Records on May 26, 2015. Featuring Maroon 5's PJ Morton on three cuts, and JRei Oliver, Terence's son, on spoken word, the core band consists of Fabian Almazan on keyboards, Charles Altura on guitar, Donald Ramsey on bass, and Oscar Seaton on drums. Cuepoint, on the web publishing site, Medium, published Blanchard's essay, "Using Music to Underscore Three Words: I Can't Breathe"^[16] which details Blanchard's revulsion by the death of Eric Garner and how the subsequent "I Can't Breathe" campaign inspired the series of songs the E-Collective created for the album.

Recognition

Grammy Awards

• Career Wins: 5^[17]
• Career Nominations: 13

Awards

Selected film-related awards for Terence Blanchard.^[18]

Discography

A complete discography of Blanchard's jazz recordings as a bandleader.^[2]

As sideman

With Art Blakey

• Oh-By the Way (Timeless, 1982)
• New York Scene (Concord, 1984)
• Blue Night (Timeless, 1985)

With Cedar Walton

• Roots (Astor Place, 1997)

Filmography

A selected filmography of Terence Blanchard scores.^[2][20]

References

Further reading

• Magro, Anthony. Contemporary Cat: Terence Blanchard with Special Guests, Scarecrow Press (2002) - ISBN 0-8108-4323-4
• Yanow, Scott. Trumpet Kings: The Players Who Shaped the Sound of Jazz Trumpet, Backbeat Books (2002) - ISBN 0-87930-608-4

External links

• Terence Blanchard's official website
• Terence Blanchard interview by Pete Lewis, 'Blues & Soul' November 2009
• Magro, Anthony. "Contemporary Cat: Terence Blanchard with Special Guests", Scarecrow Press (2002)
• Billboard Chart History for Terence Blanchard
• Interview with Terence Blanchard
• Terrence Blanchard Terrence Blanchard MusiCodex Page