Terence Blanchard

MAGNETIZED

Terence Blanchard (trumpet) is one of the most important
musician/composer/band leaders of his generation. His emotionally
moving and technically refined playing is considered by many jazz aficionados
to recall earlier jazz trumpet styles. 



Born March 13, 1962, in New Orleans, the only
child to parents Wilhelmina and Joseph Oliver Blanchard, a part-time opera
singer and insurance company manager, the young Blanchard was encouraged by his father, Joseph
Oliver, to learn to play the piano. In the third grade he discovered jazz
trumpet when a big band, featuring Alvin Alcorn on trumpet, played at a school
assembly. In his teens Blanchard attended the New Orleans Center of Creative
Arts, where he studied and played with saxophonist Donald Harrison. While performing
with Lionel Hampton's big band, he studied for two years at Rutgers University
under the tutelage of Paul Jeffrey and Bill Fielder.

In 1982 Blanchard replaced Wynton Marsalis under his
recommendation in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, working in that band up to 1986
as lead soloist and musical director. He then co-led a prominent quintet with
saxophonist Donald Harrison, recording seven albums for the Concord, Columbia,
and Evidence record labels in five years, including a stirring in-concert
tribute to the Eric Dolphy/Booker Little ensemble. 

In the '90s, Blanchard became a leader in his own right,
recording for the Columbia label, performing on the soundtracks to Spike Lee's
Do the Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues, and composing the music for Lee's film
Jungle Fever. In fact, Blanchard has written the score for every Spike Lee film
since 1991, including Malcolm X, Clockers, Summer of Sam, 25th Hour, Inside
Man, and the Hurricane Katrina documentary When the Levees Broke for HBO. With
over 40 scores to his credit, Blanchard and Mark Isham are the most
sought-after jazz musicians to ever compose for film. 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 maintains a regular studio
presence, recording his own original music for the Columbia, Sony Classical,
and Blue Note labels. Albums include The Billie Holiday Songbook (1994),
Romantic Defiance (1995), The Heart Speaks (1996), the acclaimed Wandering Moon
(2000), Let's Get Lost (2001), Bounce (2003), and especially Flow (2005), which
was produced by pianist Herbie Hancock and received two Grammy nominations.
Blanchard has been nominated for 11 Grammys and has won four in total,
including awards for New York Scene with Blakey (1984) and the soundtrack A
Tale of God's Will in 2007. In 2005, Blanchard was part of McCoy Tyner's
ensemble that won the Grammy in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category for
Illuminations.

 

A quintessential sideman as well as leader, he
has worked with prominent jazz players including Cedar Walton, Abbey Lincoln,
Joanne Brackeen, Jay McShann, Ralph Peterson, Ed Thigpen, J.J. Johnson, Toots
Thielemans, the Olympia Brass Band, Stevie Wonder, Bill Lee, Ray Brown, Poncho
Sanchez, Dr. Billy Taylor, Dr. John, Lionel Loueke, Jeff Watts, and many
others. Scarecrow Press published his autobiography, Contemporary Cat. 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. During 2007, the Monterey Jazz
Festival named Blanchard Artist-in-Residence, and the festival formed a 50th
Anniversary All-Stars ensemble featuring trumpeter James Moody, Benny Green,
Derrick Hodge, Kendrick Scott, and Nnenna Freelon. In 2008, Blanchard helped
scored the hit film Cadillac Records. Signing with Concord Jazz in 2009, he
released Choices -- recorded at the Ogden Museum of Art in Blanchard's hometown
of New Orleans -- at the end of that summer. In 2011, 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! In 2012, Blanchard returned to his film work by scoring the soundtrack
to director George Lucas' WWII action/drama Red Tails.

“I’ve always believed that in
life, what you keep in your mind is what you draw to yourself.” That’s how
trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard
explains the title of his 20th album, Magnetic, which finds a
stunning variety of sounds and styles pulled together by the irresistible force
of Blanchard’s vision.

That credo stems directly from Blanchard’s
personal faith; raised in the Christian church, he has turned in recent years
to Buddhism after meditating with Herbie Hancock while on the road with the
legendary pianist. The idea of a spiritual magnetism “is a basic concept in any
type of religion,” he says. “Both Christianity and Buddhism have forms of
meditation - one’s called prayer and one’s called chanting. But it’s all about
drawing on those things to help you attain enlightenment in your life at the
same time that you’re trying to give back to the community.”

Magnetic gives
expression to that belief through the combined voices of Blanchard’s
always-scintillating quintet. Its latest incarnation brings together longtime
members Brice Winston (saxophone) and Kendrick Scott (drums) with pianist Fabian
Almazan, who made his debut with the group on its 2009 album Choices, and its newest member,
21-year-old bass prodigy Joshua Crumbly. In addition, they’re joined by a trio
of remarkable special guests: master bassist Ron Carter, saxophonist Ravi
Coltrane, and guitarist/vocalist Lionel Loueke.

The vast array of approaches
undertaken by that ensemble is striking, from the blistering bop of “Don’t Run”
to the fragile ballad “Jacob’s Ladder;” the psychedelic electronic haze of
“Hallucinations” to the urgent edginess of “Another Step.” As Blanchard says,
“It’s a wide range of musical ideas that come together through the efforts of
the guys in the band.”

Magnetic marks
Blanchard’s return to Blue Note Records, which last released A Tale of God’s Will, his triumphant
2007 requiem for his home city, New Orleans, in the wake of the devastation
wrought by Hurricane Katrina. That harrowingly emotional song cycle is just one
of many large-scale projects Blanchard has undertaken in recent years. Since
first writing music for Spike Lee’s 1990 jazz-set movie Mo’ Better Blues, Blanchard has become a renowned film composer
with over 50 scores to his credit, most recently the WWII drama Red Tails for producer George Lucas.

This summer, Opera Theatre of
Saint Louis and Jazz St. Louis will combine forces to premiere Blanchard’s
first opera, Champion, an “Opera in
Jazz” based on the story of the gay boxing champion Emile Griffith. This
follows his recent score for Emily Mann’s Broadway production of Tennessee
Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.

After the broad scope of such lofty
undertakings, returning to a small group setting can be a challenge. “You get
accustomed to having so many different colors at your disposal,” he says. “So I
try to figure out a way to have as much diversity in everything that we play,
the same expansive color palette as when you have an orchestra and voices.”

One way that Blanchard expands his
palette on Magnetic is through the
use of electronics, creating an overdriven, electric guitar-like sound for his
horn during “Pet Step Sitter’s Theme Song” or brewing the mind-altering
atmospherics of “Hallucinations.”

The latter tune, though titled by
Blanchard’s 14-year-old daughter, also touches on the lifelong spiritual search
evoked by the album-opening title track and “Central Focus,” which was
originally recorded twenty years ago on Blanchard’s album Simply Stated. “When chanting for meditation,” he says, “you can have
those moments of reflection that will bring new ideas to you. Some people may
not call them hallucinations, but I think they’re all related in some fashion.”

Not every tune comes from such
profound motives. The hard-bopping “Don’t Run” was written solely with the
intention of allowing the band to joust with Ravi Coltrane’s soprano and Ron
Carter’s mighty bass runs. The title was inspired by a taunt from Carter to
Blanchard, asking only half-jokingly when the trumpeter would call on the
legendary bassist’s services. “Stop running from me, man,” Blanchard recalls
him saying, and when Carter speaks, you listen.

Coltrane’s contributions, which
also include a taut, powerhouse turn on tenor for “Pet Step Sitter’s Theme
Song,” came about simply because Blanchard was blown away by the saxophonist’s
latest album, Spirit Fiction. “Ravi
has developed a style and a sound that’s very unique,” Blanchard explains.
“It’s an incredible feat given who his father was and what instrument his
father played. But his being on my record has nothing to do with any of that; his
being on my record is simply due to the fact that I love the way he plays.”

The same goes for Benin-born
Lionel Loueke, who first came to prominence through Blanchard’s quintet before
becoming widely renowned as one of the most innovative guitarists and vocalists
in modern jazz. “He’s a very unique talent,” Blanchard says. “Lionel always
brings a certain spirit and energy to any project that he’s a part of.”

Blanchard also readily sings the
praises of his core group, which has been evolving over two years together to
reach the deeply attuned point at which Magnetic
finds them. “I’ve always appreciated the artistry of Brice and Kendrick,”
he says of the band’s two veterans. “They’ve very seriously committed to
developing their own unique styles of playing.”

Of newcomer Crumbly, he says,
“Josh is a young guy who’s very talented and brings a lot to the group.” And of
Almazan, he continues, “Fabian has been growing by leaps and bounds. His
harmonic knowledge has taken the band in interesting directions and he colors
things in ways that I think are very fresh and forward-thinking.”

So enamored is the bandleader of
Almazan’s talents that he affords the pianist a solo spotlight, the captivating
“Comet.” Almazan, Blanchard says, “plays with such grace and beauty. We did
five or six takes and all of them were so beautiful that it was a hard to
choose just one.”

Each member of the group provides
their own contributions to the album: Crumbly, the lovely and delicate “Jacob’s
Ladder;” Scott, the forceful, rhythmically intense “No Borders Just Horizons;”
Winston the lithe and intricate “Time To Spare;” and Almazan an “emotional
roller coaster” dedicated to his mother, “Pet Step Sitters Theme Song,” which
is later reprised as “Another Step.”

“We had so much fun playing that
tune that we just couldn’t leave it,” Blanchard explains. I thought it showed
the diverse nature of the group, when you see the directions that it goes into,
totally different from the first take.”

In his role as mentor to his
younger bandmates, Blanchard takes the mantle from his own onetime mentor, Art
Blakey. Stressing the importance for young musicians to compose as well as
improvise, Blanchard recalls the legendary drummer’s advice: “Art Blakey told
us that composition was the path to finding your own voice. If you improvise,
you don’t sit down and reflect coldly on what it is you’re playing because
you’re moving so quickly onto the next thing. Whereas when you compose, you
have to sit down and really contemplate what each note means and how you get
from one to the next. That in itself will create a style.”

Terence Blanchard’s own style
continues to evolve and expand in exciting and compelling fashion. Magnetic is sure to capture listeners
with an attractive power nearly impossible to resist.

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