Schedule

Friday, August 12 at 10 am (sheridan opera house) “how jazz is made” masterclass

friday, August 12 at 8 pm (Main Stage)

Trumpeter, composer and bandleader, Terence Blanchard, is one of the jazz world’s true heavyweights. From his earliest musical excursions in his birthplace of New Orleans — where he played with classmates Wynton and Branford Marsalis — he has consistently risen to the top, propelled by his prodigious talent and compositional chops.

Lionel Hampton recognized his bright light and took the still-studying trumpeter on tour with his orchestra. At the recommendation of Wynton Marsalis, Art Blakely tapped Terence to replace the departing Marsalis on trumpet and so he became a Jazz Messenger. From there, his involvement with scoring film began — his work with Spike Lee alone is remarkable, as he’s collaborated on most of the filmmaker’s projects. His distinctive mark on film scoring led Entertainment Weekly to declare Terence, “central to a general resurgence of jazz composition for film.” In addition to work with numerous other directors, his most recent compositional explorations found him in opera. The ground-breaking Fire Shut up in My Bones opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2021-22 season, making history as the first opera by a Black composer to be performed in the Met’s 138-year history. As he told the New York Times, “it’s not just about African Americans. It’s people from all walks of life. We have to see how all that plays out, but I don’t want to be a token. I wanted ‘Fire’ to be the production that opened up the doors for everybody. And the talent is out there.”

He has earned a raft of Grammys and other notable awards for his recordings and film work — no surprise there — and dedicates a significant portion of his energy toward music education, as well. Of note, he was named the artistic director of the Thelonious Monk (now Herbie Hancock) Institute for Jazz in 2000.

But it’s playing live with other savvy musicians that he digs the most. In an interview with DownBeat magazine, he once said, “Writing for film is fun, but nothing can beat being a jazz musician, playing a club, playing a concert.”

And nothing can beat seeing the great Terence Blanchard play for us.