Composer Spotlight : Terence Blanchard
To kick off our Composer Spotlight series we wanted to start with Jazz extraordinaire Terence Blanchard.
If you don’t know much about Terence, we’ll give you a whistle-stop breakdown of his career, but believe us- you’ll want to delve into some YouTube videos to see him in action for yourself.
After studying Jazz, Terence started his career with Lionel Hampton Orchestra in 1980. He then went on to play alongside now renown Jazz players Blakey, Donald Harrison and Mulgrew Miller in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messenger. In 1990 Blanchard left the Jazz Messengers in pursuit of a solo career. His debut album was released on Columbia Records and reached #3 on the Billboard Jazz Charts.
At Here and Now, we LOVE a good soundtrack, and after performing on soundtracks for Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing and Mo’ Better Blues, Terence went on to compose scores for Jungle Fever, and in fact has written scores for almost all of Spike Lee’s films since.
Terence Blanchard has continued to have a successful solo career with several award winning albums under his belt. He was also named Artistic Director of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in early 2000.
In 2015 Blanchard released his album Breathless with his new band The E Collective. In a Medium post Terence explains that the killing of Eric Garner, and his repeated pleas of ;I can’t breathe’ inspired the series of songs the E Collective crested for the album. With the death of George Floyd, those three words were again uttered. Perhaps it’s time for us all to listen to that album today and reflect on changes we can make to ensure those three words don’t again become relevant.
