Terence Blanchard has been a leading voice in jazz for four decades, working in film, opera and orchestral arrangements, in addition to leading several bands. He’ll lead a quintet to celebrate twenty years of his album “Flow” on August 1st at the Groton Hill Music Center, August 2nd at Newport Jazz and finally on August 3rd at Jimmie’s Jazz Club in Portsmouth, NH. He spoke to the hosts of Jazz on 89.7, Va Lynda Robinson and Al Davis.
Va Lynda Robinson: First and foremost, I want to welcome you next month to New England! I know you’ll be in Groton on August 1st, Newport Jazz Festival on August 2nd, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire at Jimmy’s August 3rd. You’re going to be highlighting the anniversary of “Flow.” Is that correct?
Terence Blanchard: Yeah, one of the former band members made me aware of the fact that it was over 20 years since we made the record. And I’d forgotten about it and I told them, I said, “No way.” [Blanchard chuckles] So we’ve been revisiting that music and adding some other stuff to it too.
Va Lynda Robinson: Oh, that’s wonderful. And I’m just so blown away by your resume. You’ve written two operas and more than 80 film and television scores. You’ve also done a lot of work with Spike Lee. Tell me about that.
Terence Blanchard: It’s been a great experience. It’s helped me to grow musically, writing for orchestra and writing for different types of musical situations has expanded my thinking in terms of how to present music with my own band. At the same time, it’s been a really great ride working on some really great movies. I have a resume of really outstanding performances and films, to my credit, that I’ve been blessed enough to work on, and that part of it has been extremely rewarding artistically.
Va Lynda Robinson: You’re a phenomenal storyteller. In fact, one of my favorite songs by you is “Levee” from the award-winning album, “A Tale of God’s Will.” Tell me about your storytelling, how you get into your storytelling, and bringing your music to life.
Terence Blanchard: Well, it comes from a lot of different areas. Obviously it comes from the film world, having the ability to work on films and helping other people tell stories. But it also comes from the jazz world. When you hang around people like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, they make you think about music in a much broader sense than just the nuts and bolts of harmony and rhythm and melody. You know there’s also the purpose, which is the most important thing. What is it that you’re writing? What is it you’re trying to say? And when those guys put those challenges to you, it makes you think about, “Well, right, why am I up here just playing these notes?” There has to be a purpose behind trying to help people heal, in my case. In some other cases, people like to make people laugh, which is also a form of healing. And a lot of those things have allowed me to develop the style, if you will, that I’ve been able to have throughout my career.
Va Lynda Robinson: You mentioned Wayne Shorter, and I know that you had a project, “Absence,” to show your gratitude to Wayne Shorter. Tell me about that project.
Terence Blanchard: Well, Wayne was a dear friend and a mentor. And I got a chance to know him, be around him, and I wanted him to know how much we appreciated and loved him before he passed. So “Absence” is a love letter to him. It was really just about trying to let him know how we felt about him. That was always his thing. He’s like, “Don’t play my music and tell me that you love me. No, show me what you have to offer. What is it that you’re bringing to the table?” So while we did some of his compositions, we also had some other things that we had put together too. We got a chance to hang out with him before we started recording, and then I also got to give him the final production of it once it was done.
Va Lynda Robinson: That’s fantastic. I want to go back to the past. I want to hear some stories of you touring with Lionel Hampton as a teenager.
Terence Blanchard: Well, that was like a growth experience which I can’t really put in words, for something that you need to publish. [Robinson and Blanchard laugh] I was on the road with some of the greatest musicians in the business, and I was 18 years old at the time, you know, fresh off the farm, just trying to find my voice.
Va Lynda Robinson: And you also spend time with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers too.
Terence Blanchard: Well, that was the real training ground for me. Being in that band for four years and becoming the musical director of that band was huge. I was 19 at the time when I joined that band and he says, “I’m gonna make you a musical director so you can come out of your shell.” ‘Cause I was a quiet kid.You didn’t know I was in a room, you know? And that’s where I got a chance to meet all of my heroes, playing with him. I remember we met Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy was doing a show with us over in Italy, and we were playing in a courtyard, you know, and there was a ton of people out there, man. I remember Art told him that I played piano in between shows. And he said, “Oh, really?” He said, “Well, look, when we go back out, man, just me and you’re gonna go out. I’m gonna play piano on a ballad for you, then you play piano for me on a ballad.” That was a nerve wracking moment in my life, but a highlight in my life as well.
Va Lynda Robinson: I’m going to invite Al Davis into our conversation. He’s the other jazz host here at WGBH. Hey Al, how you doing?
Al Davis: Hey Mr. Blanchard, hey Va Lynda. I just wanted to ask you about “Fire Shut Up In My Bones.” That sounds like an interesting project. Could you talk about that?
Terence Blanchard: Well, it depends on which part you’re talking about because there’s the opera that we had done for the Met, but the other thing we have is the live show that we do with my band and the string quartet and two singers, where we do a pared-down version of the opera. And we’ve been doing that so we can bring the melodies and the music to a broader audience who may not have a chance to go and check out the opera live, because let’s face it: when you’re in the opera world, that’s a whole 'nother beast, you know, because those productions are expensive. It takes a lot of time to put them together. So for us, we thought, “Well, if we pare it down to just, like, a performance thing, we can still bring the music to people.” And that show has actually been very effective too.
Va Lynda Robinson: “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” was the first opera by an African American composer in the Met’s history.
Terence Blanchard: Yeah, I was kind of shocked by that when the journalist asked me that. He said, “What do you feel like being the first black composer?” And I’m like, “Man, come on, this is New York City, it’s the Met, that can’t be true.” When he verified it for me, I was really astonished at all of the composers — because there’s a ledger of guys who submitted operas that were rejected, and William Grant Still’s name is in there three times. So the thing that I’ve always said when people bring that up is that I have mixed emotions about it, because there have been qualified composers who were rejected for one reason or another. And some of the comments made about William Grant Still’s music were very disrespectful, you know? “Doesn’t know what it takes to write real opera.” I’m like, really? His operas will withstand the test of time, so obviously the people at the time were looking for something specific in terms of what opera innovation is. Moving forward, you need to accept some things that are not part of the tradition.
Al Davis: You know, recently, you were just here in the area with the BSO for the John Coltrane show. That was exciting, man.
Terence Blanchard: It was a lot of fun, but I said, “Don’t you dare do that to another horn player! You need to have somebody else, that’s a lot of music to play in one show,” you know what I mean? So you need to have another artist to break it up. I had a lot of fun doing it because, you know, [Carlos] Simon, who was the guy who put together the arrangements, man, he did an amazing job. I thought, obviously the orchestra was incredible. And it was just a lot of fun playing that music. I don’t get a chance to play that music that much because I’m always doing my own thing. But getting a chance to play some of that music that I studied, man, as a kid growing up, was immensely enjoyable.
Va Lynda Robinson: Mr. Blanchard, I’d like to ask you about your band E-Collective. Can you tell me about that?
Terence Blanchard: You know, I had been listening to a lot of music and I always grew up listening to electronic music. And I wanted to put together a band that would inspire young kids to play electronic music on a high level. But at the time when we did it, Mike Brown was shot, Tamir Rice was shot. There were a lot of kids that we lost to gun violence. So I couldn’t make a “don’t worry, be happy” kind of album with that band. And it turned out to be more about “I Can’t Breathe” and Black Lives Matter. But the band is still going, we’ve been growing immensely. We’re about to do another project. You talked about “Flow,” so we’ve been revisiting that. But we’re also thinking about doing a tribute to Miles Davis and John Coltrane on the centennial year of their birth. So I’m looking forward to doing that as well
Va Lynda Robinson: Well, it’s been my pleasure talking with you and I look forward to seeing you on August 1st!
Al Davis: I have one more question before we step away. What do we expect to hear, on August 1st at the Groton Music Center? What kind of music?
Terence Blanchard: We’re revisiting this album “Flow” that I’d done 20 years ago. And it’s interesting: I’m on the road with Herbie Hancock now and Herbie produced that record. And that record symbolizes a shift in our belief in ourselves because Herbie was the one that came up and told us, he said, “Man, I really like your band.” At that time, he said the only bands he really dug was his band, Wayne’s band, and my band. And that was a huge lift for us coming from somebody like him.
Al Davis: This has been an honor, man. I’m glad we got a chance to connect with you and we’re looking forward to seeing you on August 1st at the Groton Music Center. I don’t know if you’ve been to that room, but it’s fantastic acoustically.
Terence Blanchard: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I’m really looking forward.
Terence Blanchard celebrates twenty years of “Flow” on August 1st at the Groton Hill Music Center.
