Artist Spotlight: Terence Blanchard — A Career Branching Two Worlds
Terence Blanchard has made a major name for himself in both the modern jazz world, and in the film and visual-media scoring industry. This is his story.
Terence Olive Blanchard was born on March 13, 1962 in New Orleans, Louisiana. An only child, Blanchard began playing piano at five years old, then switched to the trumpet at age eight. In high school, he took extra-curricular music classes at the New Orleans Center For Creative Arts with distinguished professors, Ellis Marsalis Jr. and Roger Dickerson. Next, Blanchard studied at Rutgers University in New Jersey, while also venturing into several musical projects outside of class.
While studying jazz at university, Blanchard began touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. In 1982, Wynton Marsalis recommended Blanchard as his replacement in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He served as the band’s musical director until 1986, having played alongside esteemed musicians such as Blakey, Donald Harrison, and Mulgrew Miller. In addition, Blanchard co-led another ensemble with Harrison, recording five albums between 1984 and 1988. He left the Jazz Messengers in 1990 to pursue a solo career. In 1991, now signed to Columbia Records, Blanchard recorded and released his debut solo album, which became a solid success, placing third on the Billboard Jazz Charts.
During this period, Blanchard met filmmaker Spike Lee, who would end up opening the door of the film world to him, and becoming a frequent collaborator of Blanchard. He first worked on Lee’s film Mo’ Better Blues, but officially his first score was for Jungle Fever (1991) and continued to score most of Lee’s films since then. In an NPR interview, Blanchard stated that working with film has helped him become more time-conscious, and how to better organize his priorities and work-process. In a 1994 interview for Downbeat Magazine, Blanchard said that “writing for film is fun, but nothing can beat being a jazz musician — playing a club, playing a concert.” To this day, Blanchard stands by what he’s said. Film allows Blanchard to experiment with different sonic textures and musical genres, he said during NPR, but the immediacy of playing with a band is totaling different. Both have their pros and cons.
In 2007, The Monterey Jazz Festival named Blanchard Artist-In-Residence, citing him as “one of his generation’s most artistically mature and innovative artists, and a committed supporter of jazz education.” In December that same year, Terence Blanchard’s quintet performed his Spike Lee soundtracks with an orchestra and singers, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kurt Elling, and Raul Midon at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. On February 2008, Blanchard won his first Grammy-award as a bandleader for A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina) in the category for Best Large Ensemble Album. Throughout the millennia, Blanchard has worked on multiple films including 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006 film), Miracle at St Anna (2008), Cadillac Records (2008), Red Tails (2012), The Comedian (2017), and more.
Furthermore, Blanchard composed music for the Broadway production The Motherfucker With the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis, and after a cross cultural workshop with Opera Fusion: New Works, Blanchard premiered his first opera, Champion, at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.
Today, Blanchard is considered an internationally renowned jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and film scorer. Over his expansive career, he has worked with a wide variety of established jazz musicians, including the Marsalis brothers, Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner, among others. He has made a significant impact on the film world too, not only collaborating with Spike Lee, but with other directors, including Leon Ichaso, Ron Shelton, Kasi Lemmons, and George Lucas.
Some of my favorite tracks:
Citations:
“BIOGRAPHY | INTERVIEW DATE: 10/8/2014.” The HistoryMakers, 8 Oct. 2014, www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/terence-blanchard.
Blanchard, Terence. “The Official Terence Blanchard Jazz Trumpeter Website.” Terence Blanchard, www.terenceblanchard.com/.
“Terence Blanchard.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 31 Mar. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Blanchard.
Nastos, Michael G. “Terence Blanchard | Biography & History.” AllMusic, www.allmusic.com/artist/terence-blanchard-mn0000020971/biography.
Chideya, Farai. “Terence Blanchard on Scoring Spike Lee Joints.” NPR, NPR, 15 Feb. 2008, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19084952.
Originally published at https://tylerleswing.com on February 13, 2021.