One of the many perks of being the US president is that if you fancy hosting an International Jazz Day concert from your front room, you can. Barack Obama and wife Michelle have announced plans to hold a concert next month, featuring a string of musical legends including Aretha Franklin, Al Jarreau, Sting and Herbie Hancock. Read More
Terence Blanchard’s Champion: An Opera in Jazz — a Unanimous Winner in San Francisco, Huffington Post
It’s just past mid-February, and yet it seems safer than safe to claim that one of the year’s most exciting musical productions just opened at the SFJazz Center. The name alone, Champion: An Opera in Jazz, tells you how innovative it is.
Opera Paralléle and SFJazz to Co-Present CHAMPION, 2/19
San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle and SFJAZZ will present their first collaboration: a new, fully staged production of Champion: An Opera in Jazz by Terence Blanchard, Read More
‘Chi-Raq’ Composer on Longtime Collaboration With Spike Lee: “It’s a Mind-Meld Kind of Thing,” The Hollywood Reporter
Grammy-winning Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard, who has scored all of Lee’s movies since 1991’s ‘Jungle Fever,’ says of working with the director, “Spike has his own sound and his own vision, and I just try to deal with his cinematic language.” Read More
Spike Lee takes on gun violence with passion and bold creativity in Chi-Raq
With its titular city again making unsettling headlines this week, “Chi-Raq” arrives like an audacious, confounding, unabashedly sincere cry of the heart.
Spike Lee’s “Chi-Raq” Burns with Rage
More alive than most of the year’s films put together, Spike Lee’s “Chi-Raq” is urgent agitprop that pulsates with unalloyed rage for the “self-inflicted genocide” of South Chicago and explodes with full-hearted (and gloriously lewd) pleas for peace.
Terence Blanchard’s E-Collective and Jacob Collier Electrify The Barbican
There’s a rich tradition of mentoring in jazz. New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard benefitted from it when he joined the great Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and now he’s passing on his knowledge.
His latest group of protégés are the E-Collective, who appear on Breathless, Blanchard’s most electronic album to date.
Halloween at Voodoo Fest – A Local View of Voodoo |The Louisiana Weekly
“My kids are getting excited about me being on the show there,” says Grammy-winning, New Orleans trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard. Primarily considered a jazz artist, Blanchard has never played nor attended the Voodoo Music +Arts Experience, commonly known as Voodoo Fest (October 30 – November 1, 2015). His appearance at Voodoo at 4:15 pm on Saturday, October 31, which features his electrified E-Collective ensemble, could certainly be considered the most unexpected addition to this year’s line-up. Throughout its history, the event has relied, to a great extent, on popular electronic, jam, punk rock, hip hop, alternative and heavy metal groups to draw young audiences to its City Park festival locale.
By Geraldine Wyckoff
Interview: New Orleans favorite Terence Blanchard on his work with the E-Collective |Gambit
Terence Blanchard has one of the great charged tones in modern jazz. His protean trumpet can come off sleek or soulful, invigorated or exasperated, often all those at once. Blanchard’s horn is listenable but never easy, seemingly living in a higher, more pitched emotional register. It’s no wonder that he’s become a go-to film score composer. The man can make a mood.
By Theo Schell-Lambert