Terence Blanchard

Terence Oliver Blanchard (born March 13, 1962) is an American trumpeter, pianist and composer.

A jazz musician, he has also composed film scores and operas.

From 1980 to 1982, he studied under jazz saxophonist Paul Jeffrey and trumpeter Bill Fielder at Rutgers University.

While studying jazz, Blanchard began touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra.

He started his career in 1982 as a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, then The Jazz Messengers.

He has composed more than forty film scores and performed on more than fifty.

In 1982, Wynton Marsalis recommended Blanchard as his replacement in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

He played alongside Blakey, Donald Harrison, and Mulgrew Miller, recording five albums from 1984 to 1988.

Blanchard was the band's music director until 1986.

He and Donald Harrison left Art Blakey in 1986 to form their quintet 'The Terence Blanchard/Donald Harrison Quintet' and signed with CBS Records.

After performing on soundtracks for Spike Lee movies, including Do the Right Thing (1989) and Mo' Better Blues (1990), Lee wanted Blanchard to compose the scores for his films beginning with Jungle Fever (1991).

He left the Jazz Messengers in 1990 to pursue a solo career.

In the 1990s, after an embouchure change, Blanchard recorded his self-titled debut for Columbia Records which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Jazz chart.

Blanchard has written the score for most of Spike Lee's films since, including Malcolm X (1992), Clockers (1995), Summer of Sam (1999), 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006), BlacKkKlansman (2018), and Da 5 Bloods (2020).

In a 1994 interview for DownBeat, Blanchard said: "Writing for film is fun, but nothing can beat being a jazz musician, playing a club, playing a concert".

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.

From 2000 to 2011, Blanchard served as artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.

Blanchard's 2001 album Let's Get Lost featured arrangements of classic songs written by Jimmy McHugh and performed by his quintet with vocalists 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.

Blanchard was a judge for the 5th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.

Blanchard composed the score for Spike Lee's four-hour Hurricane Katrina documentary for HBO entitled When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006).

Blanchard appeared in front of the camera with his mother to share their journey back to find her home destroyed.

He also created a 2007 album titled A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina) in which he recreated some pieces used in the documentary, as well as creating more pieces along with his band, to provide audiences with the opportunity to sympathize with those who had been affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Blanchard has also composed for other directors, including Gina Prince Bythewood, Ron Shelton, and Kasi Lemmons.

Entertainment Weekly proclaimed Blanchard "central to a general resurgence of jazz composition for film."

In Disney's 2009 film The Princess and the Frog, Blanchard played all of the alligator Louis' trumpet parts.

He also voiced the role of Earl the bandleader in the riverboat band.

In addition, Blanchard provided music for the theme park attraction Tiana's Bayou Adventure, which is inspired by The Princess and the Frog.

Blanchard's opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons had its world premiere at Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2019, and, on September 27, 2021, had its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, opening the company's 2021–22 season.

It is the first opera by a black composer in the entire 138-year history of the company.

In 2011, he was named artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami, and in 2015, he became a visiting scholar in jazz composition at the Berklee College of Music.

A frequent collaborator with director Spike Lee, he has been nominated for two Academy Awards for composing the scores for Lee's films BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020).

He has won five Grammy Awards from fourteen nominations.

In 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), named Blanchard to its Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies, where he remained until 2023.

The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged Blanchard's opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones in its 2021–2022 season, the first opera by an African American composer in the organization's history.

Blanchard was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the only child of Wilhelmina and Joseph Oliver Blanchard.

His father was a manager at an insurance company and a part-time opera singer.

Blanchard began playing piano at the age of five, then the trumpet at age eight after hearing Alvin Alcorn.

He played trumpet with his childhood friend Wynton Marsalis in summer music camps, along with his friend Branford Marsalis.

He attended St. Augustine High School, John F. Kennedy High School, and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts; at the latter, he studied under Roger Dickerson, his composition teacher and Ellis Marsalis who wanted Blanchard to become a piano player.