Artist: Terence Blanchard

Terence Blanchard (born March 13, 1962) is an American trumpeter, pianist and composer. He started his career in 1982 as a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, and played later with The Jazz Messengers.

He has composed more than forty film scores and performed on more than fifty. A frequent collaborator with director Spike Lee, he has been nominated for two Academy Awards for composing the scores for Lee's films Blac KKKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020). He has won five Grammy Awards from fourteen nominations.

From 2000 to 2011, Blanchard served as artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. In 2011, he was named artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami, and in 2015, he became a visiting scholar in jazz composition at the Berklee College of Music. In 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), named Blanchard to its Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies, where he will remain until 2024.

The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged Blanchard's opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones in its 2021–2022 season, the first opera by an African American composer in the organization's history.

Blanchard was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and played trumpet with his childhood friends Wynton and Branford Marsalis in summer music camps.

Blanchard toured with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra in 1982. Later that year, Wynton Marsalis recommended him as his replacement in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Blanchard was the band's music director until 1986. He played alongside Blakey, Donald Harrison, and Mulgrew Miller, recording five albums from 1984 to 1988. He and Donald Harrison left Art Blakey in 1986 to form their quintet, 'The Terence Blanchard/Donald Harrison Quintet,' and signed with CBS Records. He left the Jazz Messengers in 1990 to pursue a solo career.

In the 1990s, Blanchard recorded his self-titled debut for Columbia Records, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Jazz chart. After performing on soundtracks for Spike Lee movies, including Do the Right Thing (1989) and Mo' Better Blues (1990), Lee wanted Blanchard to compose the scores for his films, beginning with Jungle Fever (1991). Blanchard has written the score for most of Spike Lee's films since, including Malcolm X (1992), Clockers (1995), Summer of Sam (1999), 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006), BlacKkKlansman (2018), and Da 5 Bloods (2020).