Word: blanchards
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Halfway through song from his new tribute album, The Billie Holiday Songbook, trumpeter Terence Blanchard abruptly shifts the mood from brokenhearted to defiant. Reflecting the emotions of a jilted lover, he blows swirling, gathering clouds of sound. Then, suddenly piercing them with a barrage of sharp notes, he dashes off a few steeply ascending riffs, bending his notes until they cry and yowl. Throughout the album, on solo after solo (Strange Fruit, In My Solitude), Blanchard's compact, mournful-sounding melodies evoke the desperation and broken dreams that tortured Holiday, who died at 44 in 1959 of drugs and drink...
...match Blanchard's precision and flair in evoking emotion. In the course of two albums on his own, and five others with various collaborators, he has developed an expressive style reminiscent of the mid-1960s Miles Davis. He has also distinguished himself by his sideline as one of Hollywood's busiest composers: three movies with Blanchard scores -- Sugar Hill, Inkwell and Crooklyn -- are now playing in theaters...
Born in New Orleans, Blanchard grew up saturated in music. His father was an insurance man and aspiring opera singer, and his early career paralleled that of Wynton Marsalis, another hometown musician. Blanchard studied composition and classical and jazz trumpet at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, then moved to New York City, where he landed one of jazz's most enviable jobs: trumpeter in the Art Blakey Band...
Unlike Marsalis, who devotes equal time to classical music, Blanchard turned himself fully to jazz. He recorded five albums with saxophonist Donald Harrison (beginning with New York Second Line in 1984) and then two others leading his own quintet (Terence Blanchard and Simply Stated, both released in 1991). In the New York City club scene, he established himself as a composer and soloist with a silvery tone and a gift for majestic phrasing...
...Blakey!" the fan exclaimed. "I love your work! The things you did to nurture young jazzmen like Terence Blanchard -- just amazing! But you should really hear what's happened to jazz since you, ah, passed on. There are all these young performers -- such as A Tribe Called Quest, Freestyle Fellowship and now US 3 -- who are combining rap and jazz. You know rap: it's a kind of rhythmic recitation, done to a strong beat...