Terence Blanchard, Pushing Jazz Forward From a New Perch (original) (raw)

Music|Terence Blanchard, Pushing Jazz Forward From a New Perch

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/arts/music/terence-blanchard-sfjazz.html

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Critic’s Notebook

The trumpeter and composer follows the premiere of two Met operas with an appointment as executive artistic director of SFJazz in San Francisco and a Jazz Masters honor.

A man dressed in black stands, clasping his hands, in front of a vertical sign that reads SFJazz.

Terence Blanchard at SFJazz in San Francisco. The trumpeter and composer is the organization’s new executive artistic director.Credit...Scott Chernis

Sept. 6, 2023

Two big announcements came down recently about the trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard — both monumental, neither one a surprise.

In June, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Blanchard, 61, would receive a 2024 Jazz Masters fellowship, the highest lifetime-achievement honor available to a United States-based improviser.

Then a month later, as if a reminder that this lifetime still has a few major chapters ahead, the nonprofit organization and performance center SFJazz named Blanchard its executive artistic director. Hardly any other musician has so solid a grasp on the scope of what’s going on in jazz today — and no institution is as committed to reflecting, even goading, its growth.

A six-time Grammy winner, Blanchard possesses one of the most commanding and slippery trumpet styles in jazz, and for almost a decade he has led one of its most reliable ensembles, the E-Collective, full of musicians a couple of decades his junior. He has written and recorded over 40 film scores, including for most of Spike Lee’s movies. Despite being a conservatory dropout himself, he has become a leading educator, helping shape programs at U.C.L.A., the University of Miami and the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. And in recent years, he has made headlines for the back-to-back Met premieres of his two operas, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and “Champion.”

All of which makes for relevant job training for the new role. “The thing that I’ve always loved about SFJazz is that they don’t treat the music like it’s a fossil,” Blanchard said in a phone interview. “It’s a living, breathing, ongoing thing. And they respect young artists who are bringing something different to the table.”

Blanchard is taking the reins directly from SFJazz’s founder, Randall Kline, who has run the organization since it started in 1982, always with a passion for what’s next. “I remember thinking how much I love that dude,” Blanchard said. “He was just a serious music lover who happened to be a promoter.”

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