[Dixielandjazz] A Jazz Activist for New Orleans

[Steve Barbone]

Terence Blanchard, jazz trumpeter born in New Orleans, would not be OKOM for
most of us. However, he is passionately involved actively in bringing back
musical arts to that city. He is forward thinking in both his music, and in
his desire to renew the city where jazz was born.

E.G., Who else would have thought that the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz
would be relocated from USC in the land of milk and honey, to Loyala
University in New Orleans?  <http://www.monkinstitute.com/index9.html>

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

PS: Don't forget to watch the Persid Meteor Shower tonight. <grin>


Jazz Fanfare for a New New Orleans

NY TIMES - By NATE CHINEN - August 12, 2007

NEW ORLEANS

IT was hard coming back here, man,² Terence Blanchard said one recent
morning in his mother¹s house, in the Pontchartrain Park neighborhood here.
The house was empty and uncluttered, its renovation nearly complete, a far
cry from the sodden wreckage that had greeted Mr. Blanchard and his mother,
Wilhelmina, when they first returned weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Back
then Mr. Blanchard offered what consolation he could. ³This is all stuff
that can be rebuilt,² he said, in a reassuring tone.

That initial visit, and especially the staggering despair of Mrs. Blanchard,
made for one of the more poignant scenes in ³When the Levees Broke: A
Requiem in Four Acts,² the 2006 HBO documentary directed by Spike Lee. ³In
fact,² Mr. Lee said by telephone the day the film¹s six Emmy nominations
were announced, ³when we shot that scene, I stayed outside. I couldn¹t go
inside the house.²

Of course Mr. Blanchard ‹ the acclaimed jazz trumpeter and bandleader and
the composer responsible for almost all of Mr. Lee¹s film scores, including
³Levees² ‹ had no such choice. And judging by the assessment of some of his
colleagues, ³going inside² is in keeping with his temperament as a musician.

³He¹s not afraid to reach into those dark corners that we don¹t know about
and illuminate them,² the pianist Herbie Hancock said. ³And he does it with
gusto. He means it. You can tell by the way it feels.²

Now, coming up on Katrina¹s second anniversary, Mr. Blanchard, 45, is
ushering in two projects that reflect both his deep commitment to New
Orleans and his conviction that stuff can in fact be rebuilt. The effort has
significance partly because Mr. Blanchard has spent most of his career
building a name elsewhere: he has also scored dozens of films by other
directors, and his international stature as a top-shelf jazz artist
dovetails with a reputation for accessible innovation. In some ways disaster
prompted Mr. Blanchard to bring it all back home.

The first project is ³A Tale of God¹s Will (A Requiem for Katrina),² his
impressive new album for Blue Note, due out on Tuesday. In a purposeful
convergence of his film-composer and jazz-musician identities, it
interweaves Mr. Blanchard¹s ³Levees² music with new compositions for his
band and a 40-piece string orchestra. The result is a melancholy suite that
feels both intensely personal and broadly cinematic.

With heavy-hearted themes like ³Funeral Dirge² and ³Wading Through,² some
dark corners are illuminated. The cover depicts Mr. Blanchard on his
mother¹s roof, in stark silhouette.

The second project involves the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz
Performance, a graduate-level education program based for the last dozen
years at the University of Southern California. As the program¹s artistic
director, Mr. Blanchard helped broker its move to Loyola University New
Orleans, where a new class of students will begin its first semester next
week. The relocation means that the city that gave birth to jazz (and, much
later, to Mr. Blanchard) can now claim one of the art¹s most progressive
institutions.

During a two-day interval between out-of-town commitments, Mr. Blanchard
guided a visitor around his New Orleans, to places like the Magazine Po-Boy
Shop, for lunch; the Maple Leaf Bar, for a late-night set by the Rebirth
Brass Band; and the Still Perkin¹ cafe, where his wife and manager, Robin
Burgess, kept a watchful eye as their daughters, Sidney, 10, and Jordan, 8,
ducked into an adjacent bookstore.

At the restored home of his aunt Alice Douglas and her husband, the Rev.
Andrew Douglas, a few blocks from the London Avenue Canal, he visited his
mother. Mrs. Blanchard, a small, no-nonsense woman, owned up to a sort of
celebrity since ³Levees² was broadcast. Her son confirmed it: ³Everywhere I
go, people recognize me not because I play the trumpet. They recognize me
because of her.² 

Mrs. Blanchard retorted with a laugh, ³It¹s about time.²

Her son said, ³The thing I¹ve been telling everybody is that if you cry for
her, you¹ve got to cry for about a hundred thousand other people that went
through the same thing.²

Afterward, at his mother¹s house, Mr. Blanchard recalled his upbringing as
an only child. His father, Joseph Oliver Blanchard, was an insurance company
manager and part-time opera singer who encouraged his son¹s early classical
training. ³This is where I had to practice the piano every day,² he said,
indicating a corner of the den. ³Right next to the window, while the other
kids were outside playing ball.²

Before heading to the Northeast to attend Rutgers in 1980, Mr. Blanchard
studied at the New Orleans Center of Creative Arts, where he met the alto
saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr. Together they would later succeed their
former classmates Wynton and Branford Marsalis as the front line of Art
Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, then regarded as jazz¹s premier finishing
school. Mr. Blanchard and Mr. Harrison would also form their own quintet,
releasing a handful of heralded albums.

³All those guys were living in my neighborhood,² Mr. Lee recalled. ³They had
all moved up from New Orleans to Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Wynton was there,
Branford was there, Terence was there, Donald Harrison. So my father, Bill
Lee, managed to give these young jazz musicians some experience working on a
film score.² 

The film was ³Mo¹ Better Blues² (1990), starring Denzel Washington as a jazz
trumpeter who bears some resemblance to Mr. Blanchard. (The opening scene,
set in childhood, finds him stuck at the piano while his friends head off to
play ball.) Mr. Blanchard played the film¹s trumpet parts and, at the
director¹s invitation, contributed a theme.

In the studio, Spike Lee said, ³my father handed the music back to Terence
and said, ŒYou wrote it, you conduct it.¹ Terence has been doing my scores
ever since.² 

Mr. Blanchard¹s success as a film composer has led some musicians and
critics to underestimate his seriousness in jazz. (Before he signed with
Blue Note in 2003, his solo albums were issued on the Sony Classical label.)
But his working band has been a crucible of talent: two former members, the
guitarist Lionel Loueke and the pianist Aaron Parks, each recently landed
their own Blue Note contracts. Few things seem to make Mr. Blanchard prouder
than his current group with the bassist Derrick Hodge, the tenor saxophonist
Brice Winston, the drummer Kendrick Scott and, now, the pianist Fabian
Almazan.

³A Tale of God¹s Will,² like the album ³Flow² before it, includes one song
apiece by each young band member. Mr. Winston, a former New Orleans
resident, contributed a haunting lament, ³In Time of Need.² Mr. Hodge, a
budding film composer who helped with the ³Levees² score, lent his anthem
³Over There.² Mr. Parks, then still in the band, wrote a sonorous piece
called ³Ashé.² Mr. Scott brought in ³Mantra,² with his own orchestration.
(³You wrote it, you conduct it,² he was told.)

For his cultivation of these players, Mr. Blanchard is often likened to Art
Blakey. A better analogy might be Miles Davis, whose young quintet of the
mid-1960s featured compositions by all of its members and absorbed their
characteristics. 

Mr. Hancock, a member of that group, endorses the idea. ³They¹re able to
take these compositions,² he said of the musicians, ³and immediately
translate them into the particular sound of Terence¹s band, which in many
ways reminds me of what used to happen with Miles.²

The comparison would end there, if not for some Davis-like nonmusical
interests. Mr. Blanchard sped through the city in his jet-black Porsche
Carrera, and giddily described a recent spin around a racetrack in a vintage
Ferrari. And at the Freret Street Gym he stepped into the ring to train with
the two-time world kickboxing champion Steven (Spyder) Hemphill.

³The thing I like about this guy, he¹s technical,² Mr. Hemphill said after
Mr. Blanchard had landed a volley of four-punch combinations. ³He wants to
know why.² (For the record: In a Davis-Blanchard fight, the smart money
would probably be on Mr. Blanchard.)

The mentorship ethos that guides Mr. Blanchard¹s band is also central to the
Monk Institute, which established its two-year performance program in 1995.
Unique in jazz education, it admits just seven students at a time, bringing
them into regular contact not only with Mr. Blanchard but also legends like
Mr. Hancock, the institute¹s chairman. Each class works as a band and
participates in an outreach with area high schools. Among the program¹s
success stories is Mr. Loueke.

When the institute¹s contract was ending at U.S.C., a number of prestigious
universities indicated their interest. Mr. Blanchard campaigned for Loyola,
where he met his first trumpet teacher and gave his senior recital, partly
on the basis of its existing commitment to music. Of course its location had
some resonance too.

³It¹s a means for us to give back to the community, and to have this
continuing love affair with the city,² he said of the move, during an
impromptu tour of the facilities. ³But to do it in this way in particular is
what I¹m most proud of, because we¹re not trying to create something from
scratch. We¹re taking something that has already worked, and bringing it
here. It¹s like putting a beautiful orchid in some seriously fertilized
soil.²

That metaphor could apply to Mr. Blanchard. It¹s been more than 25 years
since he left New Orleans to pursue his career, more than a decade since he
moved back to be near his two other children, Terence and Olivia, after his
first marriage ended.

Now, though he keeps an apartment in Los Angeles and tours often, his roots
have clearly been reinforced. He knows well the problems still facing New
Orleans ‹ a natural topic of conversation at dinner with Garland Robinette,
the talk-radio host who famously broadcast through the storm ‹ but he¹s
committed to its renewal.

Together with Ms. Burgess and their daughters, he awaits the renovation of
their new house uptown, which will include a cavernous attic studio,
soundproofed and wired, where he can work on film music. It will be a
five-minute walk from the Monk Institute, where he sees at least one facet
of the city¹s future brimming with promise.