He has composed the music for some of Spike Lee’s most important cinematic masterpieces.
This Friday, Terence Blanchard travels to Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, to perform selections from his Grammy-winning opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which made him the first Black composer to perform an opera at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2021.
“We have a concert edition,” Blanchard told WTOP. “We may not have the sets or the costumes, but it’s a great show. Listening to the melodies performed in this environment is a completely different kind of experience. . . . When you attend this concert, you have a general musical concept of what you would delight in if you saw the opera live.
Based on New York Times journalist Charles M. ‘s 2014 best-selling memoir, Charles M. Blow, the opera explores Blow’s struggles to triumph over a cycle of violence. It features a script written by filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, who worked with Blanchard on the coming-age mystery “Eve’s Bayou” (1997) and the Harriet Tubman biopic “Harriet” (2019).
“I asked her to write this booklet and she did a fantastic, amazing job,” Blanchard said.
Born in New Orleans in 1962, Blanchard grew up with Wynton and Branford Marsalis before studying at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts and later at Rutgers University. He began touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers before forming Terence Blanchard/Donald. Harrison Quintet and, despite everything, went solo in 1990. The collective result was 16 Grammy nominations and six awards.
“Any time you’re identified in this way, it’s a blessing and an honor. And I don’t accept it because there are a lot of wonderful musicians doing wonderful work,” Blanchard said.
While his music career was flourishing, he also began working on films with Spike Lee, acting as a consulting musician on “Do the Right Thing” (1989), which included original music by Lee’s late father, composer Bill Lee.
“It was hard to say at the time because Spike had such an exclusive taste in film that we learned it as much as anyone else,” Blanchard said. “We knew it was really compelling because we saw ourselves and our culture on screen, but to see what it means to other people over the years is something we couldn’t have predicted. “
Blanchard began composing original pieces of music for “Mo’ Better Blues” (1990) before earning his first credits as a single songwriter on “Jungle Fever” (1991). Their biggest collaboration is probably the biopic “Malcolm X” (1992), starring Denzel. Blanchard even made an appearance as a trumpet player in Billie Holiday’s band.
“When you hear the beginning of ‘Malcolm “That big crash at the beginning is like a surprise to What I hear, the listening rhythm is the bass drum that you hear, the trumpet melody is like Malcolm himself, and then the cello in reaction is like me, so It builds and builds and builds until the end.
Their collaboration continued on “Crooklyn” (1994), “Clockers” (1995), “4 Little Girls” (1997), “Summer of Sam” (1999), “Bamboozled” (2000), “25th Hour” (2002). . , “Inside Man” (2006), “When the Levees Broke” (2006), “Miracle at St. Anna” (2008) and “Chi-Raq” (2015) before Blanchard finally earned two long-awaited Oscar nominations. to Best Picture. Original music for “BlackKKlansman” (2018) and “Da five Bloods” (2020).
“Each task had its own signature sound,” Blanchard said. “That was the wonderful thing about working with Spike because he would challenge me in that sense, he would say things like, ‘So what haven’t you done yet on a score?”It would make me think of new ideas, so when they gave us ‘BlackKKlansguy’, we ended up using my electronic band as the basis for the score and introduced my friend Charles Altura’s guitar.
Blanchard has composed music for Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” (2009), Regina King’s “One Night in Miami” (2020) and “Love
“When Gina took me to see an excerpt from [‘The Woman King,'” I was thrilled to see it,” Blanchard said. “I was literally honored to be a part of it. When we had the chance to make music, man, I brought in some of the singers from my opera career. I asked a clever friend of mine, Dianne Reeves, to sing. Or we said it was as if everything we’d been through in our music career had led us to this moment. in making this film.
Listen to our full verbal exchange in the podcast below:
Praised by the Washington Post for “his academic ability to rate each and every winner of the most productive picture in history,” Jason Fraley started at WTOP as editor of Morning Drive in 2008, film critic in 2011, and entertainment editor in 2014. offering daily art policy on-air and online.