Friday, June 27 | 8 pm | Dinkelspiel Auditorium
Tickets: $34 general | $17 students

Online:
By phone: 650.725.ARTS (2787); In Person: Stanford Ticket Office
For more information, go to our Ticketing Information Page

Program Notes

“Bold, modern jazz that’s respectful of the tradition and served with style and emotion…abundant talent.  His writing is superb and heartfelt, his playing perfect…” – The Wall Street Journal

New Orleans-born Terence Blanchard is one of the most prolific musicians in modern jazz.  As a trumpeter and bandleader, he has more than a dozen albums and three Grammy awards to his name, but his acclaimed film music reaches an even wider audience.  Blanchard’s atmospheric jazz compositions and haunting trumpet sound have become an indispensable part of filmmaker Spike Lee’s signature style over the course of their long collaboration.  In 2006, Blanchard’s music and personal history came together dramatically when he composed and performed the score for Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, about the tragedy in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  Motivated by a belief in the power of art to document and comment on the times in which we live, Blanchard expanded and re-orchestrated material from the Levees soundtrack into his most recent album A Tale of God’s Will, a suite of compositions for his quintet and a 40-piece string orchestra.

INSIDE JAZZ:
Jazz and New Orleans: Post-Katrina
Speaker: Terence Blanchard
7 pm, free with concert ticket

Supported in part by Susan & Lee David; Robert & Sharon Yoerg

Terence Blanchard web site

What is the first recording you remember hearing as a child?
Clifford Brown & Max Roach Inc.

Who is your favorite jazz musician under the age of 30?
Derrick Hodge.

What job would you have if you weren’t a jazz musician?
Athletic Director.

What’s your favorite food?
New Orleans Seafood.

What’s the most exotic place you’ve traveled to as a musician?
Bermuda or South Africa, it’s hard to say.

What’s the last book you’ve read?
Probably a manual on digital performance.

If you could play with any other musician, living or dead (with whom you have not played), who would it be and why?
John Coltrane or Miles Davis, because they are both geniuses at their craft.

What’s your favorite tune?
I don’t have one, I’ve heard so many that I couldn’t possibly choose.

Who is your greatest musical influence?
Miles Davis for sure, you can’t beat it.

If you were stranded on a desert island and could only have three recordings with you, what would they be?
Miles Davis, “Four & More”; Clifford Brown, “Clifford Brown With Strings” & Thelonious Monk, “Plays Duke Ellington.”

How much do you practice each week?
It varies, I tend to practice more on the road.

What hobbies do you have?
Boxing.

If you could be any other type of artist other than a jazz musician, what would you be and why?
A painter, because it’s creating stories through color and light.

Do you have a favorite music-related joke (that can be told in mixed company)?
A jazz vocalist walks in to a club for a gig and meets her band. She says, “Let’s start with “Misty”” The piano player says, “Ok guys, 1st bar in 3/8, 2nd bar in 7/8, 3rd in 11/4, 4th bar in 7…” The vocalist pipes up, “wait, wait, what?” The pianist says, “Well, that’s how you sang it
last night.”

When did you become interested in music, and what circumstances or events led to your becoming a professional musician?
I became interested at an early age, because I came from a musical family, started playing piano when I was five. I decided that I wanted to be professional in my early teens after my father took me out of football and I began focusing on music.

If you were to describe your music as a color, what color would it be and why?
Purple = red for heat + blue for coolness.