Is jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard riding the biggest possible wave right now? His opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones was a huge success at the Metropolitan Opera. He received two Grammy nominations for his album Absence, a tribute to legendary musician Wayne Shorter. He received an Emmy nomination for his score for They Call Me Magic. He’s just completed a series of concerts with Herbie Hancock throughout Europe.
Blanchard has scored the upcoming film The Woman King, which marks his first epic film score. Next March the Los Angeles Philharmonic will dedicate an entire evening to his film scores for director Spike Lee.
But wait, there’s more! He begins a tour on August 4th with The E-Collective and the Turtle Island Quartet that will find him performing music from Absence and many of his other albums. They’ll also perform music from Fire Shut Up in My Bones (see more about that below) in San Francisco.
Which means this was a great time to catch up, once again, with Blanchard. We spoke via Zoom last month while he was on the road with Hancock. Blanchard was in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Spain. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.
Q: This is our third conversation over the course of several years. Each conversation we’ve had, we’ve always talked about whether the world is getting to be a better place for jazz music. In 2015 you thought we were in the dirty part of the recovery. In 2019 you said, “I think we recovered a great deal.” Three years later where are we?
I think extremely healthy. You look at all the young people who are making records and doing a lot of great things. I didn’t see that necessarily happening this way when I first got in the business in the eighties, but to see it now, it’s like extremely exciting. Ambrose Akinmusire, the list is endless: Walter Smith, Theo Crocker, there are so many young people who are doing a lot of great things that I’m looking at them to see what’s going to happen next.
I listened to new albums by Tyshawn Sorey or Gerald Clayton or Joel Ross. I’m struck by how there’s so much calm and a quieter approach to their music right now. Even your album, Absence, has a lot of calm music in it. Do you think that’s a coincidence or is that a reaction to the upheaval that we’ve experienced in the last few years?
I think it’s kind of a reflection of what’s happening with where we are as a society. With everything that’s been going on within the last five to ten years we started to have demonstrations again. Prior to that there was a lot of things going on and we weren’t in the streets like we were in the sixties, you know. But I think once we hit well past the 2000s people started coming out again.
And I think you’ll start to see that in the music. Actually you are seeing it in the music. It’s just that these guys have a different way of approaching it and dealing with it. It’s not about screaming and yelling, it’s about dealing with facts. It’s about dealing with issues and dealing with them head on. So I think that’s something that’s reflected in what’s going on with the music.
You’re working right now with Herbie Hancock, an artist who has had a major impact in the world. Your recent album, Absence, was a tribute to Wayne Shorter. When you have been working with and around these guys who have had incredible careers, do you consider what your own legacy might be when you’re at that age and is that important to you?
I’m not thinking about it now. I’m thinking about how does he do what he does every night? You know what I mean? It’s crazy, man. I can’t pin him down to anything. He plays differently every night. He’s always stretching and he’s always finding new ideas. And it’s pretty miraculous when you think about it, because he’s 82 and he’s had enough hits where he could just sit out and go and play his hits and just be cool. But that’s not what he’s about. He’s a true artist in terms of trying to find new things all the time.
Speaking of trying new things, I wish I lived in San Francisco because I know you’re doing four nights with the Turtle Island Quartet of music from Fire Shut Up in My Bones with vocalists. How are you reimagining some of that music for that configuration of musicians?
I love David Balakrishnan’s writing and arranging, so I hired him to do the arrangements and we sat down and talked about what it is that we want to do. And I told them I’m not trying to mimic what the orchestrations are in the opera. This is a chance for us to show the world what The E Collective and Turtle Island is along with this music so people can re-imagine this music in a different way. And I’m really excited about what he’s coming out with, man, because it’s going to be very unique. It’s going to be very different.
Is that something that you can foresee recording at some point?
Definitely. I mean, it’s something we’re talking about for sure.
I’m sure that would appeal to people who see the word opera and get scared.
I’m trying to demystify that. Look, it’s the same thing used to happen with some of our friends when you said the word jazz. “I don’t know anything about jazz.” I didn’t ask you if you did. I just want you to come and check out the music.
You should just go experience music, whether you think you like it or not, because you never know what you’re going to respond to.
Of course. But in this world that we live in, and especially in the pop culture side of our existence, there’s always these kind of images that people have of whether it’s jazz or whether it’s opera, anything, [they] take a small snippet of an idea and try to portray it as being the entire thing. So people always get the wrong impression about what these things are. A lot of my friends would come to see the opera in New York. [They] got really excited about opera because they’d never been before. And I was trying to tell them, “Listen, man, you have to experience this. It is the highest form of musical theater you could ever experience in the world.“
Fire Shut Up in My Bones was a huge success for the Met. I’m wondering what that says to you about new works and what impact they can have versus the classic repertoire and maybe in particular about works by Black composers?
Well, I think really what it boils down to is just trying to be as honest as you can in your writing. You know, one of the things Art Blakey used to tell us, “Man, you never want to be too hip when you when you’re composing music”. And he said “Two hips make an ass.” That was always his thing you know. And it’s one of the things that I try to live my life by.
I’m not trying to write music that goes over people’s heads. I’m trying to write music that’s right with them in their souls. I think when you do that the music can have an effect on people and it’s what people are looking for. It’s what we need in this world. We need music that’s not going to intimidate you.
The other thing Art Blakey used to always say was “The easiest thing to do is to write something that nobody can understand – that’s easy to do.” He said the hardest thing to do is to write something that touches people in their soul and still have your own identity within it, you know? That’s what’s been on my mind. The thing that’s been driving me throughout my career is to be right with the public who’s listening to the music and hopefully create something that everybody can enjoy.
When we spoke in 2019, which was which was before Fire was at the Met, you said that you were under no illusion that you were standing on the shoulders of a lot of people who didn’t have the same opportunities that you did. With your first opera, Champion, coming up next season as well, your shoulders are the ones that are now supporting other musicians who perhaps thought the glass ceiling at the Met could never be broken.
That really hasn’t hit me as of yet. I’m still thinking of William Grant Still. I’m still thinking of people who should have been at the Met, who deserved to be there. I read that ledger that had all of these names of rejected projects. Then to see his name in it three times and listen to some of and read some of the excuses as to why his music was turned away, it’s infuriating. Because you start to think to yourself there’s somebody who doesn’t know anything about opera claiming that he doesn’t know anything about opera when actually he’s revolutionizing opera with what he’s written.
So those things make me really determined to make sure that what we’re doing is going to live up to the legacy of those guys and hopefully open the door for other composers to come through later on. Which we already know is already happening. Peter Gelb has made it his mission to open up the doors to all different races, every gender, to express themselves on the stage. I think this has been a profound thing and it should be an eye-opening thing for everybody across the globe in the opera world to see that people are clamoring to see themselves on a stage.
The Santa Fe Opera has a world premiere of a new opera inspired by the play M. Butterfly. I think it’s incumbent upon institutions to give opportunities, but also not just be one and done and say, well, we’ve done it.
The other thing, too, is not only one and done, but not only be one and done with composers. Writing an opera is a very arduous thing, obviously. As soon as I had written my first one and it premiered, there was a certain amount of clarity that came over me the night of the premiere that went into the development of the second one, you know what I mean? And I look at it and think to myself, had I been one and done, I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to make Fire better.
Now with Champion going to the Met, I get a chance to go back and revisit that and even kind of beef that up based on what I did the first time. So I think it’s incumbent upon these companies to really understand that it’s really about trying to develop the talent, not just giving them a chance, but to also help them to develop their craft.
One of the things I love about about Absence, going back to this album, is that it isn’t a traditional tribute album. You’ve said before in interviews that Wayne Shorter instilled in you the idea that he didn’t want to hear you do what he did. He wanted to hear you do what you do – to paraphrase. Now that you’re going on the road with The E Collective and Turtle Island Quartet, how are you giving new life to the compositions so that you aren’t doing just what you did on the record, but you’re doing what you need to do live?
I mean, it’s one of those things where those guys play it differently every night. And I can’t explain it to you. You have to experience it. There are people who have come to hear us play at a club date when we play a few nights and they come to hear us on different nights and can’t believe that we’re the same band. And that’s what I take from Wayne. That’s what I take from Herbie. You know, I’ve been around those guys where you can’t have any expectations because it’s really about being in the moment.
I know teaching is important to you. How much are you learning from guys like David Ginyard, Charles Altura and David Balakrishnan? [Members of The E-Collective]
You can’t even put it in the words because I feel blessed to be around those guys because they bring in ideas that I never would have thought of. They are so creative in their approach, not only to composition, but improvisation that it becomes a really a big challenge man just to be on a stage with them. If you make a musical statement, they respond to it in a way where now you have to be flexible. You have to be able to just shift on a dime with these guys. And it’s been a learning experience of which I’m grateful for and I feel truly blessed to be experiencing right now.
Is it nice to know at this point in your career that there’s still new stuff to learn and that there always will be or to be reminded of that?
Of course. I would quit if it weren’t that way. I couldn’t just do the same thing night after night just to make a dollar. No, no, no, no, no. Because this isn’t all about money, but about uplifting my spirit and my soul. What’s going to help other people to hear, you know? So that’s really what it’s about.
I do want to ask you about something that Wayne Shorter said in a 2005 interview with Abstract Logix. He said, “It’s okay to be vulnerable, to open one’s self and take chances and not to be afraid of the unknown. And that goes for the audience wise, too. Because we’re going to have to deal with the unexpected from now on.” How much does the unexpected inform who you are today and the work you do?
It’s one of those things where you’d like to think that it’s a huge part of it, because you want to be open to what’s going on in the universe. But the reality of it is that we do have a style and a sound. Just by merely having a style means that you’ve already eliminated other things that are possible for you to play because you’re playing within a context and that’s what dictates your style.
It goes back to find a balance between all of those things, you know, allowing yourself to be in the moment and allowing yourself to be free to respond to things that you may not have thought of, but are really a part of what’s going on in music at that time. Because that’s one of the things that we have to do as a community as well.
I always think jazz is probably the best representation of how we should live as a community. We all have ideas about what it is that we want to do, but at a certain point it’s really about the music. So I have to throw away some of my ideas if they’re not relevant to what’s going on at that particular time. That in itself is a thing that excites me because it keeps you on your toes and it keeps you guessing and it makes you quick. You know, it keeps you moving.
To watch our full interview with Terence Blanchard, please go here.
For tickets and more information about Blanchard’s four shows (August 4th-7th) at SFJAZZ, please go here. For tickets and more information about Blanchard’s August 8th performance at Kuumbwa Jazz in Santa Cruz, please go here. For tickets and more information about the August 9th performance at The Ford in Los Angeles, please go here. For tickets and more information about Blanchard’s August 12th appearance at the Telluride Jazz Festival, please go here. For additional tour dates, please go here.
Photo: Terence Blanchard (Photo by Cedric Angeles/Courtesy Blue Note Records)