Terence Blanchard
Scullers Jazz Club at the DoubleTree Guest Suites Boston
400 Soldiers Road - Boston, MA 02134
September 25, 2010
Terence Blanchard’s universe revolves around music, culture, and politics. Not with an in your face style, but recognizable through a persistent purposeful set of choices he makes with his projects, career, and where to live - in his case, his hometown of New Orleans.
Blanchard was in Boston to participate in last week’s Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival. As a young man, he played with such greats as Art Blakey, Lionel Hampton, and Ellis Marsalis, Sr. He set out on his own in 1990, has 29 albums to his credit so far and a handful of Grammy Awards.
Terence Blanchard’s trumpet music in his second, sold-out show at Scullers Jazz Club on Saturday night was like the old saying about New England weather. “If you don’t like it, wait a minute.” His sound alternated between lyrical and fusion styles of jazz, sometimes within eight beats.
Blanchard’s exquisite, meditative, solo that prefaced his first number was underpinned by his drummer’s soft brushwork and bass player’s spare notes. The lyrical beginning segued into a selection from Blanchard’s recent CD “Choices,” a concept album in which Blanchard inserts political and cultural elements via the spoken word in some selections and fills the rest of the album with gorgeous melodies.
During his first number, Blanchard nudged his foot onto a switch on stage and plugged in a spoken word section by Dr. Cornel West (Princeton professor, author, lecturer, activist, with affinity for progressive politics and jazz) that appears on his most recent album, “Choices”. The snippets from West’s riffs ruminate on personal responsibility and free will. As in the album, Blanchard played his horn over West’s words with a special amplifier attached to the trumpet's bell that gives his instrument an eerie, almost undersea whale tone. He thundered into an Afro-fusion ending fingering a thousand notes a minute, his drummer, bass, and piano trio hot on his heels to complete his composition, “Wandering Wonder”.
A composer, Blanchard has scored over 50 film scores. Scoring Darnell Martin’s “Cadillac Records,” a moving story based on the rise of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess and his stars Muddy Waters, Etta James, and Little Walter, was a chance for Blanchard to put his musical stamp on this film that illuminated the inhospitable cultural milieu that for years thwarted "race music" from entering mainstream radio stations in America.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1042877/
Blanchard also scored the haunting music in Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary, “When The Levees Broke,” and the Lee’s just released HBO documentary, “If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise.’ Born and raised in New Orleans, he has a feel for the music. In one of the scenes of “If God Is Willing,” the Blanchard is filmed taking his mother on her first heart-rending trip back to her New Orleans home which was ruined by Katrina’s flood waters.
Early in his career, Blanchard (b. 1962) played with Ellis Marsalis Jr., Art Blakey and Lionel Hampton. When he struck out on his own, he developed his own style, which, appropriately, seems to be a gumbo of musical forms that were dominant in each decade since 1960 and reflected in the bands with which he was associated.
Blanchard now plays the mentor role with the young men in his trio: 18-year-old Joshua Crumbly on bass, Kendrick Scott on drums, and Cuban-born Fabian Almazan on piano. “Each of these musicians composes, each of them can improvise, they’re artists in their own right,” he said. Each of them wrote sections for his CD “Choices.”
I’m not a big fan of fusion jazz or Afro-Fusion jazz. Even when I had no idea where the time signatures were and where the rhythmic patterns were going I could tell the participants did. Blanchard was generous with solo time for each of his band members - they rewarded him, and us - with brilliant, extended improvisation.
As Artistic Director of the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz in New Orleans, Blanchard works directly with students in arranging and composing and programming. Maybe most importantly, he’s involved in community outreach programs in New Orleans.
Terence Blanchard’s performance was the final event in several days of musical performances in the Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival.
Comments