Terence Blanchard

Hailing from the New Orleans jazz scene, trumpeter, composer and bandleader Terence Blanchard emerged in the early 1980s by joining Lionel Hampton’s orchestra and then Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, where he succeeded Wynton Marsalis and helped revitalize the group’s post-bop sound. At the same time he formed a notable partnership with saxophonist Donald Harrison before launching his career as a leader around 1990 with albums such as "Terence Blanchard" (1991) and "Simply Stated" (1992), drawing on modern jazz that blends lyrical melody, a hard-bop legacy and chamber-music influences. Firmly established on the international stage, he developed a steady body of film work and an ongoing collaboration with Spike Lee, scoring films like "Malcolm X" (1992), "25th Hour" (2002) and "BlacKkKlansman" (2018), with music that combines jazz, orchestral colors and motifs inspired by gospel and blues. Beginning with "A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina)" (2007), he made his output more explicitly reflective of his social environment and New Orleans’ history, a direction he continued with the electric E-Collective on "Breathless" (2015), "Live" (2018) and "Absence" (2021, with the Turtle Island Quartet), mixing contemporary jazz, electric groove and textures drawn from rock and R&B. He has also composed the operas "Champion" (2013) and "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" (2019) and teaches composition and jazz at various institutions, maintaining an activity split between performance, studio recording, film music and operatic creation.