AS OF JANUARY 13, 2023 FIVE HUNDRED MUSICAL ARTISTS HAVE BEEN FEATURED IN THE SOUND PROJECTIONS MAGAZINE THAT BEGAN ITS ONLINE PUBLICATION ON NOVEMBER 1, 2014.
ACCESS TO EACH ARTIST CAN BE FOUND IN THE 'BLOG ARCHIVE' (ARTISTS LISTED IN WEEKLY CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) AND IN THE ‘LABELS’ SECTION (ARTIST NAMES, TOPICS, ETC.) ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. CLICK ON THESE RESPECTIVE LINKS TO ACCESS THEIR CONTENT:
https://soundprojections.blogspot.com/
https://soundprojections.blogspot.com/2015/03/terence-blanchard-b-march-13-1962.html
PHOTO: TERENCE BLANCHARD (b. March 13, 1962)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/terence-blanchard-mn0000020971
Terence Blanchard
(b. March 13, 1962)
Biography by Matt Collar
Blessed with a warm, yet often fiery trumpet sound and an ear for deep harmonic sophistication, Terence Blanchard built a deeply expansive career balancing post-bop jazz projects with his vibrant film scores for director Spike Lee. Along with fellow New Orleans trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, Blanchard emerged in the '80s, drawing upon the influence of players like Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, and Miles Davis. A member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, he also co-led a group with Donald Harrison, and released his own albums like 1993's Simply Stated. His profile grew with his association with director Lee, supplying the music for films like Mo' Better Blues and Malcolm X. In 2008, Blanchard won his first Grammy as a leader for his large ensemble album A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina). More accolades followed, including two Oscar nominations for his scores to Lee's films BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods. Along with his film work, Blanchard has continued to expand his reach, composing operas (as with Fire Shut Up My Bones) and exploring an ever far-reaching and stylistically nuanced brand of post-bop and fusion, as on 2013's Magnetic, 2015's Breathless, and 2021's Absence with Turtle Island Quartet. In 2022, he brought his varied experience and influences to the soundtrack to The Woman King.
Born in 1962 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Terence Oliver Blanchard grew up the only child of Wilhelmina and Joseph Oliver Blanchard. His father, who worked as a manager at an insurance company and sang opera, started his son on piano lessons at age five. By age eight, he'd switched to the trumpet and was soon playing alongside childhood friend Wynton Marsalis at summer band camps. As a teenager, he took music classes at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts with Roger Dickerson and Ellis Marsalis. After high school, Blanchard studied under Paul Jeffrey and Bill Fielder at Rutgers University in New Jersey, a period that also found him touring with Lionel Hampton's orchestra. In 1982, Blanchard joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, taking over the trumpet chair from Wynton Marsalis, who had recommended him for the job. Blanchard toured with Blakey for several years, eventually becoming the band's musical director before leaving in 1986. Also during the '80s, he co-led a sophisticated quintet with New Orleans saxophonist Donald Harrison that was modeled after Miles Davis' groups of the late '60s. Together, they recorded a handful of albums for Concord, Columbia, and Evidence, including 1983's New York Second Line, 1984's Discernment, and 1988's Black Pearl.
In the '90s, Blanchard came into his own as a leader, recording for the Columbia label and issuing albums like 1992's Terence Blanchard and 1993's Simply Stated. These albums found him balancing his love of the New Orleans jazz and bop traditions with his own increasingly distinctive and progressive compositional voice. Other albums, like 1994's minor-tinged The Billie Holiday Songbook, 1996's The Heart Speaks with singer/composer Ivan Lins, and 1999's orchestral-leaning Jazz in Film showcased his broad stylistic palette.
![Do the Right Thing [Score]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release-covers/170/0001/146/0001146467.jpg)
During this period, he developed a fruitful working relationship with director Spike Lee. Having first played on the soundtracks to several of Lee's films, including Mo' Better Blues and Do the Right Thing, Blanchard then composed the music for many of Lee's subsequent films, including Jungle Fever, Malcom X, Clockers, Summer of Sam, 25th Hour, Inside Man, and the Hurricane Katrina documentary When the Levees Broke for HBO.
In the fall of 2000, Blanchard was named artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Keeping up with his love of live performance and touring, Blanchard also maintained a regular studio presence, delivering albums like 2000's Wandering Moon, 2001's Let's Get Lost, and 2003's Bounce. Produced by pianist Herbie Hancock, 2005's Flow received two Grammy nominations. Also in 2005, Blanchard was part of pianist McCoy Tyner's ensemble that won the Grammy in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category for Illuminations. The trumpeter also took home the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album for 2007's A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina). By April of 2007, the Monk Institute announced its Commitment to New Orleans initiative, which included the relocation of the program to the campus of Loyola University in New Orleans, spearheaded by Blanchard.
Signing with Concord Jazz in 2009, he released Choices -- recorded at the Ogden Museum of Art in Blanchard's hometown -- at the end of that summer. Two years later, he paid tribute to the innovative Afro-Cuban recordings of Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo by teaming up with Latin jazz percussionist Poncho Sanchez for the studio album Chano y Dizzy! The following year, Blanchard returned to his film work by scoring the soundtrack to director George Lucas' WWII action-drama Red Tails. Also that year, music business legend Don Was brought the trumpeter back to Blue Note Records. Blanchard's first offering for the label was 2013's Magnetic, an album that showcased a new quintet and guest appearances by Ron Carter and labelmates Lionel Loueke and Ravi Coltrane. Also in 2013, Blanchard debuted his first opera, Champion, which was a co-commission by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Jazz St. Louis, and based on the life of Black welterweight boxer Emile Griffith.
![The Comedian [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]](https://rovimusic.rovicorp.com/image.jpg?c=9Bx088kE8bqMMYXMuy3VeT6KsMttLlyBmmVTZ6_CLs0=&f=2)
Blanchard's second Blue Note album was 2015's electric fusion- and R&B-infused Breathless. Featuring backing from Blanchard's band the E-Collective, the album also included contributions from vocalist PJ Morton. Returning to film work, he supplied the original score for director Taylor Hackford's 2017 film Comedian. Joining Blanchard on the soundtrack were pianist Kenny Barron, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, alto saxophonist Khari Allen Lee, bassist David Pulphus, and drummer Carl Allen.
In 2018, Blanchard was named a USA Fellow, and composed the score to Spike Lee's film BlacKkKlansman, which won him a Grammy Award. He also released the concert album Live with his E-Collective. Returning to film work, Blanchard scored the 2019 Harriet Tubman biopic Harriet, along with another Lee film, Da 5 Bloods, in 2020. Other soundtracks from that year included One Night in Miami and the first season of HBO's Perry Mason series.
In 2021, the trumpeter was back with his E-Collective for the Grammy-nominated Absence, a tribute to Wayne Shorter that also featured contributions from the Turtle Island Quartet. That same year, Blanchard saw his second opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones (based on writer Charles M. Blow's memoir), become the first opera by a Black composer to be staged by New York's Metropolitan Opera. The following year, he scored director Gina Prince-Blythwood's historical action drama The Woman King, starring Viola Davis. The soundtrack, which found Blanchard combining classical orchestration with West African musical traditions, featured contributions by the Vox Noire vocal group, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and vocalist Dianne Reeves.
https://lincolncenter.org/series/lincoln-center-presents/s/
See Me As I Am
Lincoln Center’s Year-Long Celebration of Terence Blanchard
As a composer, bandleader and trumpeter making music that spans jazz,
pop, chamber music and more, with dozens of film scores to his credit
(and honors including 7 Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations),
Terence Blanchard claims a singular place among the great artists
honored at Lincoln Center. His bold artistry combined with his
distinguished work as an educator and arts statesman are unparalleled in
their breadth and impact in American culture. Held over 12 months
beginning in March 2023, the first cross-campus exploration of a single
artist, See Me As I Am: Lincoln Center’s Year-Long Celebration of Terence Blanchard
honors that brilliance as it spills across the campus, and beyond. This
multi-disciplinary series features a diverse range of art forms—from
jazz, opera, chamber music, orchestral music, film scores and more—in
collaboration with seven arts organizations across campus: Film at Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Juilliard School, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Over a forty-year career, Terence Blanchard has established himself as a creative innovator, a technical virtuoso, and a mouthpiece for underrepresented human tragedies, past and present. A 2018 USA Fellow, multiple Grammy Award winner and Oscar nominated film scorer, Blanchard first captured national attention as a world-class jazz trumpeter, playing with Lionel Hampton and Art Blakey. Alongside nearly two dozen albums as a bandleader, Blanchard maintains a long and fruitful association with the director Spike Lee, penning the scores for more than 20 of Lee's projects, while also juggling substantial demand for his work from Hollywood and Broadway. Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones opened the 2021-22 Metropolitan Opera season, making him the inaugural African-American composer to premiere there. A tireless force who has enervated tradition across disciplines, Blanchard's perspicacity and scope have made him one of the nation's most critically acclaimed voices.
Read full biography »
Terence Blanchard Biography
November 2022
Upcoming Events
The Movie Music of Terence Blanchard
Lincoln Center Presents
New York Philharmonic
January 28, 2024
The Movie Music of Terence Blanchard celebrates more than 30 years of collaboration between multiple GRAMMY-winning musician and Oscar-nominated composer Terence Blanchard and numerous iconic filmmakers, chief among them Spike Lee, alongside luminaries Gina Prince-Bythewood, Regina King, Kasi Lemmons and many more.
Terence Blanchard: A Career Retrospective in Jazz
Jazz at Lincoln Center
March 1–2, 2024
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/terence-blanchard/
Terence Blanchard
The crucible of catastrophe impels creative expression. Since the turn of the century, this has taken shape in manifold ways, from artistic responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the war in Iraq to the pummeling of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It is this latter calamity that informs Crescent City native son Terence Blanchard's impassioned song cycle, A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina), a 13-track emotional tour de force of anger, rage, compassion, melancholy and beauty. A Tale of God's Will, which features Blanchard's quintet—pianist Aaron Parks, saxophonist Brice Winston, bassist Derrick Hodge, drummer Kendrick Scott—as well as a 40-member string orchestra, is his third album for Blue Note Records. (Since signing with the label in 2003, Blanchard has released two other critically acclaimed albums, Bounce and Flow, the latter of which was nominated for two Grammys in 2006.)
"This is what we are called to do as artists," says the trumpeter, bandleader, arranger and film-score composer." We document our social surroundings and give our impressions of events. The problem with Katrina is that the devastation is so vast that there's only been a trickle of art so far. We're all still digesting what went on and what continues to happen. It's like an unending story. For me, like so many others, it's taken me a moment to get my mind around all of this. I knew I needed to express this musically to keep the story alive, but so many important things—the safety of family members, figuring out how to rebuild my mother's house—never allowed me the time to breathe for a minute."
An important jumpstart for A Tale of God's Will was director Spike Lee's decision to document the aftermath of Katrina on film,in what turned out to be the four-hour HBO documentary, When The Levees Broke, which aired last year. Lee, who has enlisted Blanchard on numerous occasions to score his films, such as Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X, The 25th Hour and Inside Man, tapped him once again for his documentary. "That started me to make some musical statements for this moment in time," Blanchard says. "It's part of the grieving process. Once I wrote some of the music for Spike's film,I knew I could take it and expand upon it. Meanwhile, guys in my band were writing music that reflected on what happened in the aftermath of Katrina. This provided me with the perfect opportunity to bring the band all together."
Four of the Levees tracks—"Levees," "Wading Through," "The Water" and "Funeral Dirge"—formed a nucleus of material for A Tale of God's Will. "Melodically and structurally, the tunes are the same, but the arrangements are different," says Blanchard, who cites as an example the dramatic piece "Levees" with its lyrical trumpeted woe. In that case, there's a long orchestral opening and interlude. "Spike had limited resources in filming the documentary, which means there was no money for orchestration," says Blanchard. He adds, "The whole idea for this piece was to show the calm before the storm that you can hear in the string arrangement and the interlude is when the storm comes and the levees break. The second section is when people are on their roofs waiting for help, so the trumpet cries."
Recording this album challenged Blanchard, who says that he had to "contain myself, but I was so frustrated and in rage. I wanted the trumpet to scream on every track, but I feel that God is using me to speak for all the souls in New Orleans. We're all still tired, but it's almost as if things have gone back to normal for people outside while our lives here don't matter."
Another tune from Levees, "Water," features a full orchestral plunge with Blanchard's wailing trumpet emerging. Blanchard explains that with all the flood waters still high, it looked as if the city was cast away in an ocean. "The water was omnipresent," says Blanchard who was out of the city when disaster struck yet was watching CNN nonstop. "I was in disbelief seeing how 80 percent of the city was under water and that my old neighborhood had 12 feet of water. I remember when I was a kid and Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans and there were a few feet of water. That scared me then and actually made me fear water."
The other Lee-related tracks are the slowly loping melodic gem, "Wading Through" (also used in Lee's film Inside Man) and the march-beat "Funeral Dirge," a tune Blanchard says "was one of the hardest pieces for me to write. To see your city on TV with dead bodies in neighborhoods you knew was deep. It was as if it were Baghdad. This was my attempt to pay homage to the people who lost their lives, to give people a proper burial. It was intense working on these pieces that sometimes I had to take a breath, go outside and play with the kids, and then come back at it."
Other Blanchard tunes on A Tale of God's Will include "Dear Mom," his personal tribute to his mother who lost her home (her emotional first return to see the remains was documented by Lee in Levees) and a series of "ghost" tunes interspersed throughout the album: the African beat-drenched "Ghost of Congo Square," the trumpet-bass dance "Ghost of Betsy" (about the aforementioned Hurricane Betsy) and the plaintive tune sketched by saxophone and drums, "Ghost of 1927" (another flood that ravaged New Orleans). The ghost pieces were unplanned at the onset of the recording sessions, which took place in Los Angeles and Seattle.
"They just came to me throughout the recording," Blanchard says. "The ghosts represent the warnings of the past. In the first one,we added in handclaps and percussion as well as the chant, 'This is the tale of God's will.' That's what this story is about: God's will be done. We can't understand why things happened, but we can trust that we can learn something from it."
The band member contributions prove to be just as potent and reflective as Blanchard's music. Park's "Ashe," which translated from the Yoruban language means "and so it shall be." He explains that the beautiful melody "acts as a benediction: an acceptance of—and release from—past troubles and an ushering in of something new, determined and optimistic." Blanchard notes, "The emotion and melody set the tone for the album in capturing the exhaustion a lot of people felt after the storm and flood." Winston's melancholic "In Time of Need," is buoyed by Blanchard and Scott's wordless vocals. "This tune marks a shift in Brice's artistic career," Blanchard says. "He wanted it to feature my trumpet, so I said, sure, but slowly I took myself out of the piece so that it became his feature." Winston, who spent his entire adult life in New Orleans, says he was compelled to write the tune "to express, through music, my sadness and frustration for my own family's tumultuous existence as well as for the countless people affected as a result of human ineptitude."
Scott's epic piece, "Mantra," begins with a bass feature with tablas in the mix that opens into a pensive and then dramatic soundscape. Scott says, "Our obligation is to help those who survived rebuild their lives and to rebuild their communities safer than they were before. The word mantra…is characterized as a statement that is repeated frequently. My greatest hope is that this recording and this song will serve as a mantra for healing and renewal, for reflection and progression, and as an offering to touch peoples' lives for the better."
Hodge says that his ultimately hopeful tune, "Over There," is about the "constant search in life" for something better. He notes, "Our present circumstances can make it difficult for us at times to see better for ourselves. Sometimes that 'Over There' may be just a song that can help us through." Blanchard explains that the song was captured on tape when the band was sound checking the mikes. After subsequent takes, all agreed that the first run through was the keeper.
Blanchard adds that the entire project, like Hodge's song, is about gratitude. "Requiem tells the story," he says, "that needs to heard so that people will continue to talk about what happened after Katrina."
https://www.sfjazz.org/onthecorner/sfjazz-appoints-terence-blanchard-executive-artistic-director/
SFJAZZ APPOINTS TERENCE BLANCHARD
EXECUTIVE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Seven-Time Grammy Winner & Two-Time Academy Award Nominee will lead SFJAZZ’s Artistic Programming and Creative Direction
Terence Blanchard at the SFJAZZ Center
SFJAZZ announces the appointment of 7-Time Grammy Winner and 2-Time Academy Award Nominee Terence Blanchard as Executive Artistic Director. This new position will lead the organization’s artistic programming and guide its overall creative direction. Blanchard’s appointment comes as SFJAZZ Founder Randall Kline prepares to step down this year from the organization he founded in 1983.
This year, SFJAZZ is celebrating its 40th Anniversary and the 10th
Birthday of the award-winning SFJAZZ Center. Blanchard joins SFJAZZ as
it prepares for the 2023-2024 season beginning September 7.
Blanchard
is a renowned composer, bandleader, and trumpet player who has been a
consistent artistic force for making powerful musical statements for
over 40 years. From his stint with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
to writing scores for Spike Lee and other films, he is unique in the
jazz world as an artist whose creative endeavors go far beyond the genre
into film scoring, crafting television series soundscapes, and
conceiving grand operas that have been recognized at the highest levels
of art appreciation. A recipient of a 2018 USA Artist Fellowship and a
2023 Peabody Medal, Blanchard is also a passionate educational mentor,
having held positions at the Berklee Institute of Music, The Thelonious
Monk Institute of Jazz, and as Chair of Jazz Studies at the UCLA Herb
Alpert School of Music, amongst many others. Additionally, Blanchard has
been at the forefront of giving voice in his works to socio-cultural
issues and racial injustices of our time.
Blanchard has had a long relationship with SFJAZZ and has performed numerous times at the SFJAZZ Center and for the organization. From 2014-2016, he was a SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director and, in 2016, presented his opera Champion: An Opera in Jazz. Most recently, in August 2022, his E-Collective with Turtle Island Quartet performed at the SFJAZZ Center.
As Executive Artistic Director, Blanchard will be the artistic leader of the organization and will help formulate and implement artistic programming across diverse disciplines and genres. He will work closely with the teams at SFJAZZ to curate year-round concert programming, expand the SFJAZZ ‘At Home’ digital platform, and further develop community engagement and educational offerings. Blanchard’s appointment comes after a national search, conducted by Arts Consulting Group.
Said Blanchard, “I am honored and excited to become a part of such an amazing and historic institution. SFJAZZ has meant so much to the development of America’s Greatest artform. I am looking forward to collaborating with the staff while also bringing my own ideas about how to move our music forward and continue the SFJAZZ mission to explore the full spectrum of jazz—from its origins to its diverse and evolving expressions around the world today. I cannot wait to continue this journey.”
Incoming SFJAZZ Executive Artistic Director Terence Blanchard, and SFJAZZ CEO Greg Stern
Greg Stern, SFJAZZ CEO noted, “Terence Blanchard is an extraordinary artist whose experience and accomplishments make him an ideal creative leader for SFJAZZ, building on the incredible legacy that Randall Kline has worked to create over the past forty years.”
Denise Young, SFJAZZ Board Chair added, "We could not be more thrilled to have Terence leading and inspiring SFJAZZ in the fulfillment of a vision started 40 years ago. Terence's expansive impact upon so many areas and genres was a perfect match for the vision we have at SFJAZZ. He perfectly understands and embodies our desire to further enrich audience experiences, expand artist opportunities, and amplify the voices of this special music to powerfully and positively transform the future."
All photos by Scott Chernis
PRESS ARTICLES
› New York Times: Terence Blanchard, Pushing Jazz Forward From a New Perch
› Nate Chinen: SFJAZZ taps Terence Blanchard to lead the way
› SF Chronicle: SFJAZZ names its next executive artistic director
› KQED: Terence Blanchard, Award-Winning Musician and Composer, to Lead SFJAZZ
› Verite News: Terence Blanchard named executive artistic director at SFJAZZ
› New York Times: Terence Blanchard: I Am Not Who You Want Me to Be
› Terence Blanchard Named 2024 NEA Jazz Master
› Terence Blanchard, incoming SFJAZZ director, named NEA Jazz Master
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/special-series/terence-blanchard-black-identity.html
The Big Ideas: Who Do You Think You Are?
I Am Not Who You Want Me to Be
If you think you can define a musician’s identity only by his past work, listen again.
June 15, 2023
Mr. Blanchard is a musician and composer.
This essay is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: Who do you think you are? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page.
“Terence Blanchard? Oh, is he doing jazz now?”
My agent was asked this some years ago at a breakfast meeting over bagels and not-that-great coffee near the New York Hilton Midtown. This was in the first weeks of January, when top international festival programmers visit New York City, while hundreds of performances at Winter Jazzfest and Globalfest take place. Several international music- and theater-booking-related conferences also happen around the same time. During this time, the city teems with possibility, previewing what might appear in venues worldwide over the coming months and years.
“Is he doing jazz now?” was not meant to be uplifting or to invite a discussion of my new projects. It was a criticism of me, my past performances and my approach to composing music, asked by one of the gatekeepers of European festivals.
Despite being in town to check out the soon-to-be-known unknowns and negotiate with their agents when the fees are still low, Mr. Festival Programmer was dressing down this conveniently offstage Terence Blanchard guy by implying — to my agent no less — that I would never play the kind of jazz he could book for his festivals.
