Terrence Blanchard Coming to Soka Performing Arts Center

Jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard will come to Soka Performing Arts Center April 12 for the End of Season Celebration, complete with a pre-concert lecture and a sparkling & sweet intermission reception for all ticket holders.

Terence Blanchard will celebrate with an exploration of his critically acclaimed 2005 album, FLOW, with the E-Collective, a quartet of musicians that knows his music intimately. To celebrate this fan-favorite album and his own growth as an artist over the last twenty years, Blanchard has reworked the music of FLOW for the E-Collective. Blanchard’s performance at Soka Performing Arts Center is part of the Jazz Monsters Series presented in partnership with Blueport Jazz.

Blanchard, an NEA Jazz Master, two-time Emmy and Oscar nominee and eight-time GRAMMY®-winner, has been a hugely influential force in the jazz world for more than four decades. While a student at Rutgers University, he toured with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. In 1982, legendary jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis recommended Blanchard to replace him in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He became its music director and recorded five albums with the universally revered band. In 1986 he formed his own quintet, which launched several important careers and influenced a generation of influential jazz artists.

Since the 1990s, Blanchard has been active as a composer as well. He has scored most of Spike Lee’s films beginning with “Jungle Fever” in 1991. Blanchard has also composed for other film directors, including Gina Prince-Bythewood, Regina King, Taylor Hackford, Ron Shelton and Kasi Lemmons. Blanchard made history when his “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” became the first opera by a Black composer performed by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, opening the company's 2021–22 season. A year later, when the Met premiered Blanchard’s opera, “Champion,” he became the first composer since Richard Strauss to receive two operatic premieres in successive seasons.

The E-Collective features Blanchard on trumpet, Charles Altura on guitar, Fabian Almazan on piano and synthesizers, Oscar Seaton on drums, and newest member David “DJ” Ginyard on bass. “This band is an example of the revolution that is taking place,” Blanchard said. “When you look at the conglomeration of us all from different walks of life, look at how we come together and create something harmonious. We are what the promise of America is supposed to be.”

In celebration of his artistic achievements, Blanchard and the E-Collective will reimagine the music from FLOW for a 20th-anniversary tour in 2025. Inspired in part by Miles Davis’ landmark groups of the late 1960s and early 1970s, FLOW employs unusual sonorities, deep funk grooves and a collage of global influences. Produced by Herbie Hancock, it proved to be a landmark critical and creative achievement for Blanchard.

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