Jazz Takes: Terence Blanchard

Terence Blanchard is a GRAMMY-winning trumpeter, composer, NEA Jazz Master, and the SFJAZZ Executive Artistic Director. He shares his thoughts about getting called for gigs as a professional, his work as a soundtrack composer, trumpet technique, TikTok, the proverbial “jazz police,” and much more.

Terence returns to the Miner stage for three performances during the SFJAZZ 2026-27 Season, January 29-31, 2027. Tickets and more information are available here.

His June 2025 concert with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane in celebration of the Miles Davis and John Coltrane centennials is available on demand here.

ABOUT TERENCE BLANCHARD

A savvy bandleader, celebrated film composer, brilliant jazz writer, and influential educator, the GRAMMY-winning New Orleans native is a major creative force in the modern jazz scene. A prodigious trumpeter, he cut his teeth as a member of drummer Art Blakey’s iconic ensemble The Jazz Messengers and has risen to become one of the most in-demand collaborators in jazz. 
 
He has composed over 40 movie scores, including soundtracks for the majority of director Spike Lee’s work, making Blanchard the most prolific jazz artist working in film. 

An active composer for opera, he presented a revised version of his Champion: An Opera in Jazz at SFJAZZ in February 2016, and his follow-up, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, became the first opera by a Black composer to be presented at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2021.  
Blanchard was appointed SFJAZZ Executive Artistic Director in 2023 and was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2024.