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Celebrated trumpet player and jazz master Terence Blanchard will make his return to the scene of prior triumphs when he brings a new company of musicians to the Williams Center for the Arts at Lafayette College 8 p.m. Tuesday, October 5. Tickets are available for $15. To order, contact the Williams Center box office at 610-330-5009.
Blanchard thrilled a capacity Williams Center audience with his Quartet and guest vocalist Philip Manuel in 1996, and he ignited the Art Blakey tribute program the following year with his luscious trumpet playing. This time, he will be joined by two exciting young saxophonists, Aaron Fletcher and Brice Winston. Pianist Peter Martin and bassist David Pulphus will anchor the rhythm section, along with phenomenal drummer Eric Harland, a Betty Carter protege.
As a special residency enhancement, Blanchard will speak Monday, October 4 in a program hosted by the Art Resource Center at 1110 Northampton Street, in cooperation with the Easton Jazz Festival and the Boys and Girls Club of Easton. This added event, which launches public awareness for the November 6 Jazz Festival performance by Maynard Ferguson at Easton’s State Theater, features Blanchard discussing his career in music, both as a jazz artist and as a film composer. The annual Easton Jazz Festival is a benefit program for the Easton Boys and Girls Club. Tickets for the October 4 Art Resource Center event, including hors d’oeuvres at Cafe Aaron, are $10 and may be ordered by calling the Easton Boys and Girls Club office at 610-253-5846.
Earlier this year, Blanchard released the album Jazz In Film to critical acclaim. In this recording project, he builds upon his own significant work as an award-winning film composer for numerous Spike Lee
films, including the critically acclaimed Clockers and Summer of Sam, with expert arrangements of classic
compositions by such film composers as Bernard Herrman, Jerry Goldsmith, Quincy Jones, and Duke Ellington. Music from this recording will be featured in his October 5 performance at Lafayette.
His interpretation of various movie scores was celebrated by Time magazine: “Blanchard, a film composer himself, finds new beauty and wit in the originals, fashioning minisuites from the above-mentioned scores (and others) that shift between cinematic lushness and small-group drive. Blanchard’s bruised, lyrical solo on ‘Chinatown’ is a highlight – a freshly heard cry in the night.” Others praising the album include the San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly.
Also receiving notice have been recent performances by Blanchard and his group. “Mr. Blanchard’s tone was marvelous, clean and fully formed, with gorgeous notes that bent for bars at a time until they reached their destination,” said The New York Times in a review.
The 1999-2000 Performance Series at Lafayette College is sponsored, in part, by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Terence Blanchard’s residency engagement is supported by a special grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program.