Jazz musician Terence Blanchard records new album in New Orleans

Jazz musician Terence Blanchard honed his musical gift in the streets and clubs of his hometown New Orleans and received music's highest honor for an album about the city's darkest hour — Hurricane Katrina.

But in a career spanning nearly three decades, roughly 50 film scores and more than a dozen albums, the 47-year-old trumpeter had never recorded an album in New Orleans.

After making an appearance on this year's Grammy Awards show in a special segment celebrating New Orleans music, Blanchard said there was no better place to record his latest album, "Choices," than at home.

"I was so proud to represent the city like that," he said of leading the Dirty Dozen Brass Band onto the Grammy stage.

But Blanchard didn't want the celebration of his hometown to end there. This month he got to work on "Choices" with his five-piece band and guest artist, Bilal, a hip-hop and jazz singer from New York.

While Blanchard's last album, the Grammy-winning "A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina)," stemmed from the storm's pain and destruction, this one would be a celebration of all that has survived Katrina, he said.

That's why Blanchard chose to record from the Patrick F. Taylor Library, a building dating back to the late 1800s that has survived more than a century of hurricanes and decades of neglect.

"Being in this building, in this city, creating something here. ... It's a powerful thing, and it's something we can all be proud of," he said.

Blanchard said not recording an album in his hometown wasn't intentional. He was either living or working elsewhere, he said.

Katrina's destruction — including the flooding of his mother's home — inspired "A Tale of God's Will," the album that earned Blanchard a Grammy in 2007 for best large jazz ensemble album. It included 13 emotional songs with such titles as "Levees," "The Water," "In Time of Need" and "Funeral Dirge."

Blanchard was nominated that year for best jazz instrumental solo for "Levees," the track he composed for Spike Lee's HBO documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts."

While he could never forget Katrina, which struck in 2005, Blanchard said he was ready for an album focused on growth, change and the celebration of "how far we've come."

Terence Oliver Blanchard was born March 13, 1962, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the only child to parents Wilhelmina and Joseph Oliver. Terence began playing piano at the age of five and then the trumpet at age eight upon hearing Alvin Alcorn play. Blanchard played trumpet recreationally alongside childhood friend Wynton Marsalis in summer music camps but showed no real proficiency on the instrument. Then, while in high school, he began studying at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) under Roger Dickerson and Ellis Marsalis, Jr.. From 1980 to 1982, Blanchard studied under jazz saxophonist Paul Jeffrey and trumpeter Bill Fielder at Rutgers University, while touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. In 1982, Wynton Marsalis recommended Blanchard to replace him in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and until 1986, Blanchard was the band's trumpeter and musical director. With Blakey and as co-leader of a quintet with saxophonist Donald Harrison and pianist Mulgrew Miller, Blanchard rose to prominence as a key figure in the 1980s Jazz Resurgence. The Harrison/Blanchard group recorded five albums from 1984-1988 until Blanchard left to pursue a solo career in 1990.[1]

In the 1990s, after a laborious but successful embouchure change, Blanchard was as busy as ever. He recorded his self-titled debut for Columbia Records which reached third on the Billboard Jazz Charts. After performing on soundtracks for Spike Lee movies, including Do the Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues, Lee wanted Blanchard to compose the scores for his films beginning with "Jungle Fever" (1991). Blanchard has written the score for every Spike Lee film since including, Malcolm X, Clockers, Summer of Sam, 25th Hour, Inside Man. In 2006, he composed the score for Spike Lee's 4-hour Hurricane Katrina documentary for HBO entitled When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Blanchard also appeared in front of the camera with his mother to share their emotional journey back to find her home completely destroyed.

Blanchard has also composed for other directors, including Leon Icasho, Ron Shelton and Kasi Lemmons. With over forty scores to his credit, Blanchard is the most prolific jazz musician to ever compose for movies. Entertainment Weekly proclaimed Blanchard "central to a general resurgence of jazz composition for film." Yet in a 1994 interview for Down Beat, Blanchard was quoted as saying, "Writing for film is fun, but nothing can beat being a jazz musician, playing a club, playing a concert," [2]

All the while, Blanchard has remained true to his jazz roots as a trumpeter and bandleader on the performance circuit. He has recorded several award-winning albums for Columbia, Sony Classical and Blue Note Records, including In My Solitude: The Billie Holiday Songbook (1994), Romantic Defiance (1995), The Heart Speaks (1996), Wandering Moon (2000), Let's Get Lost (2001) and Flow (2005), which was produced by pianist Herbie Hancock and received two Grammy Award nominations.

Terence Blanchard's 2001 CD Let's Get Lost was his most commercially successful album to date. It features new arrangements of classic songs written by Jimmy McHugh and performed by his own quintet along with the leading ladies of jazz vocals: Diana Krall, Jane Monheit, Dianne Reeves, and Cassandra Wilson.

In 2005, Blanchard was part of the ensemble that won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for his participation on McCoy Tyner’s Illuminations, an award he shared with Tyner, Gary Bartz, Christian McBride and Lewis Nash.