Terence Blanchard's Vision for the 2024-25 Season and Beyond

It’s been just over a year since SFJAZZ dropped its bombshell announcement — that trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard would take over as its Executive Artistic Director. As the 2024-25 Season begins, we decided to check in and find out how his vision for the organization is taking shape.

He calls it “an incubator for creativity.”

The new season includes more than 350 shows and a rich sampling of creative artists.

Bass virtuoso Stanley Clarke will have his own residency (Sept. 5-8). The late Wayne Shorter’s quartet will re-emerge with a new saxophonist, Mark Turner, to celebrate Shorter's compositional genius (Oct. 31 and Nov. 1). Bassist and singer Meshell Ndegeocello will present her latest project, The Gospel of James Baldwin (Jan. 17-19). And the organization’s Resident Artistic Directors — guitarist Julian Lage (Feb. 20-23), harpist Brandee Younger (March 6-9), Oakland-bred saxophonist Howard Wiley (March 8-9 and May 24), and pianist Kenny Barron (April 10-13) — will create shows “from scratch.” They will include rappers and vocalists, brand new bands, and even (in two cases) an orchestra.

Closest to Blanchard’s heart, though, are shows that spotlight young or mid-career musicians who he is singling out for all-star billing. He is presenting many of them in a season-long series dubbed “Terence Blanchard’s Upswing.” Most are double-bills in 700-seat Miner Auditorium, including the Sept. 21 kickoff with bands led by a couple of killer players: alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and trumpeter Keyon Harrold. You can see the full “Upswing” lineup here.

For 40 years, Blanchard has embodied the creative life. He played trumpet with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He has composed dozens of TV and film scores, including a bunch for Spike Lee. His operas Champion and Fire Shut Up in My Bones have been staged by New York’s Metropolitan Opera. (When “Fire” premiered in 2021, he became the first Black composer ever to have a work staged at the Met, which was founded in 1883.)

At age 62, he is still a touring jazz musician, both with Herbie Hancock’s band and with his own E-Collective. During our conversation, he kept talking about “expansion” — expanding and diversifying the SFJAZZ audience, expanding its educational outreach. He is curious about new technologies and how they can be brought to bear in the concert hall. He is adding a surprising new layer to the Resident Artistic Director program and, yes, he is planning his next opera.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Let’s talk about your Upswing series and your vision for the new season.

A: I’m excited about the possibilities this season holds for the future. I’ve been looking at the music business for a long time now, and it’s changed. When I got into this, you could still get signed to a major label, and they could get you radio play, and they could help you tour. It’s different nowadays. Now we’ve got the streaming services and the marketing dollars are not where they used to be.

So I look at our organization as a gap filler for some of those things. And one of the things I want to do is bring new names to our audiences, and the Upswing series is our way of doing it.

Q: How’d it come about?

A: My first year on the job, I was doing a lot of touring and talking to a lot of musicians while on the road. And I’d always ask, “Hey man, have you played at SFJAZZ?” And too many times the answer was, “No!” So this series is meant to address that situation. We’re booking double bills in Miner Auditorium — artists who are too big to play the small room (the SFJAZZ Center’s club-like Joe Henderson Lab) but not well-known enough to play Miner on their own. So Upswing is for these artists who are kind of in the middle zone and who are building their careers. And the shows are selling well. We’re trying to fill the hall with these double bills, and the intention is to build up these artists to the point where they can fill it on their own.

Q: The inaugural Upswing show (Sept. 21) features bands led by Immanuel Wilkins and Keyon Harrold. That’s a helluva double bill.

A: When I was coming along, guys like that would’ve been working all the time. I’ve always liked Immanuel. And Keyon, of course, is a great trumpet player. They’re both great musicians. So I want to bring them in — and artists like them who are deserving of having the spotlight. We want to introduce them to our Bay Area audience. That’s what we want to do — bring in these new names and expand what we do.

Q: After a year on the job, how would you describe your approach to running the organization?

A: I feel like Randall Kline gave me the keys to a Ferrari. It’s an extremely successful organization on its own and it doesn’t need any kind of overhaul. Not at all. For me, again, it's more about expanding. There are a lot of great artists we’ve presented before and we’re bringing them back. But more and more — and you’ll see a lot of it in the 2025-26 season — we’re going to start to bring in other names that we’ve been missing out on. Like a Thundercat, just to give you an example.

Q: What else is on your agenda?

A: There are a few key things that really are on my agenda. One is to create a very unique experience for people who come to the SFJAZZ Center. Randall brought in our amazing immersive media system, which opens up so many possibilities in the way we present shows. So here’s what we’re going to do: along with our RADs, we’re now going to have a group of VADs, which stands for Visual Artistic Directors. And we’re going to pair these resident visual artists with our resident musicians to create an experience that you won’t find anywhere else in the jazz world.

Q: When will this start?

A: We’ve started. This season, we’re pairing a video artist with Kenny Barron, and we’re also pairing a video guy with Brandee Younger. Now that we have this immersive system, it’s like, “Let’s get some artists who can design something that’s based on the music.”

Q: Randall used to describe the immersive system as a “1960s Bill Graham-style light show on steroids.” It sounds like you plan to take it to the next level.

A: The idea is just to create a beautiful experience. It really hit me one night when Meshell Ndegeocello was playing in Miner. And she was doing a ballad and they brought down the lights and put stars up around the hall, and it was just breathtaking. And I thought, “Wow, gone are the days when people just stand on the stage and play.”

Another thing that I really really want to do — and we’re in the midst of planning it for next season — is to create an outdoor festival as a gift to the community. The idea is to have a free concert in Patricia’s Green (a public space in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood) and close off some of the streets and have food trucks and vendors selling their merchandise. And the plan is also to have a tent where we’ll have a ticketed event. We hope to do it for one weekend next year and build from there.

First and foremost, the festival would be for the community.

But in addition to that, we really need to make SFJAZZ a destination spot for people from around the world. That’s my big vision for the organization.

As part of that, we want to keep building our online presence in terms of the video productions that we do. Not just streaming the concerts, but all the things we do with the artists, like our Drop the Needle series, which is like all these mini-blindfold tests. And I want to do a series that’s not even about the music; it’ll be about fashion. Because sometimes when we talk about music, we’re preaching to the choir. We need to expand our audience to make it a cool experience.

Q: Expanding and diversifying the audience is part of your mission. How is that going?

A: About a year ago, we had an open house at the SFJAZZ Center and a lot of people from the neighborhood came in. And there were people who’d never been there before — and that’s a travesty. For people to say it was their first time in the building; it just hit me weird; it broke my heart in some kind of way. I understand it, because when my operas opened at the Met, a lot of people came who’d never been there before. But once they came through the doors, they were no longer intimidated. That’s what I want to do here. I want to break down that barrier and help rebuild our community around the music.

Q: When I got into the music, a long time ago, it was seen as kind of subversive — revolutionary; it was definitely not the establishment’s music. It was music of the people. The way it’s often viewed today is surprising, I think, to old-timers.

A: I know what you mean. When I was coming up, I thought of it in the same way — jazz was cool. But over the years, the business has changed the way it’s perceived and we need to address that.

Q: It’s hard to change perceptions.

A: One thing I’ve noticed is that when you see our High School All-Stars, the kids are really great. But — this is a little touchy to discuss — you don’t see a lot of diversity there. And I think part of the reason is that you have some kids in Oakland and some of the surrounding communities who can’t afford private lessons. So we’ve been raising money, and we’re going to start offering lessons to these kids. We’ve recently raised about $500,000 to beef up some of our existing educational programs, and a third of that will go toward lessons. Hopefully people will read about it and get in touch with us.

In some respects, jazz has gotten to be like the tennis economy; it’s gotten expensive. When I was coming up, private lessons weren’t that much, so my parents could afford it. Things have become less accessible, so that’s why we’re doing this.

Q: You describe yourself as “an education guy.” I know you love jam sessions and would like to hold them more frequently in the Joe Henderson Lab. How does that fit into SFJAZZ’s broader educational program?

A: To me, it falls under the educational banner. We have another program where we bring kids into the hall for sound checks and let them watch and ask questions at a Q&A. You want to inspire them to learn and keep developing, which is also what happens at jam sessions. And one of the things about jam sessions that I always thought was really exciting is, you’d have three trumpet players up there on one tune and they’d all have entirely different styles. They’re all playing on the same chord changes, but with three different visions. That’s always blown me away. It’s always been fascinating to me.

Q: Let’s update a few of the initiatives you mentioned a year ago. Are you still looking to expand partnerships with other arts groups? With Jazz at Lincoln Center?

A: I want to collaborate with other organizations in the Bay Area – the San Francisco Ballet and so on. These are long-term goals. As for Lincoln Center, that collaboration would speak to the whole notion of what jazz is. Because while they’re a very different organization, it doesn’t mean we don’t support each other and build this music together and make it beneficial to our communities. But beyond that, it’s important to create partnerships with other arts organizations in other genres. We all love art. It’s one of the things I’ve learned during my own career — composing for film, composing operas. We all use the same scales! And we use the same instruments, mostly. We need to come together and get rid of those divisions.

Q: Describe some of your other goals.

A: I want to expand SFJAZZ Records, our in-house label. To me that’s exciting, because we’re nonprofit and we don’t have to go out there and make a ton of money off these records — which I think we could! But really, all we need to do is make our money back; as a rule, it doesn’t cost that much to make a jazz album. So we’d be starting out with a couple of artists. Obviously, that includes the SFJAZZ Collective — and maybe myself. Who knows? And then we’d build it from there, and that can go a long way in terms of putting our stamp on the music, by having a few artists whose vision we believe in.

Another idea is to have an “SFJAZZ Presents” kind of thing – to present concerts all over the world under our own banner. Like I said, these are long-term goals, but we have to get started. The important thing is to jump in.

Q: A year ago, you mentioned a plan to revamp the way Resident Artistic Directors present their shows. Instead of having them — a Kenny Barron, say, or a Brandee Younger — squeeze four shows into a single week, with a different program each night, you’d spread their shows across the season.

A: Right. The reason is that when we ask our Resident Artistic Directors to do something unique on a nightly basis — it’s kind of unfair to just give them a couple of rehearsals and then say “go.” I think they should have more time to prepare. That’s how I felt when I was a RAD and the others all say the same. (A Resident Artistic Director during the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons, Blanchard presented Champion at the SFJAZZ Center in 2016.)

Q: The SFJAZZ Collective has been evolving. For one thing, they’re focusing more and more on original music.

A: I’m really proud of that band. That’s a helluva band. And with this last recording that they’ve done (New Works & Classics Reimagined), I think they really have established a sound for the group. They played right ahead of Herbie (Hancock) in Stern Grove (on Aug 11) and Herbie came over and said, “Man, I love that band.” I said, “Believe me, I know.” So I want to improve their booking situation and get them out there as the ambassadors for our organization. That’s my goal – to keep them working to the point where they’re begging for vacations!

Q: How big a role should local musicians play in the organization?

A: I’m from New Orleans where we have a lot of great local musicians, and we do a lot for them. The Bay Area also has a lot of great players, and I think we should be doing the same thing here. But we’ve got to be smart about it. Howard Wiley is a guy who’s a perfect example of what we’re trying to do. Step by step — like we’re doing with the Upswing series — we’re trying to move him to the point where he’s just doing shows in Miner. For us to make that happen as an organization, it means a lot to me. Because it ain’t easy out here being a jazz musician. I know what the struggles are. If we’re going to be an arts organization, let’s be about the art. When I look at this community and its musicians, I can see that it’s fertile ground for a lot of great creativity. Let’s jump in and make it happen. If we make mistakes, so be it.

Q: You’ll be featured with your own E-Collective and the Turtle Island Quartet this season at the SFJAZZ Center (Jan. 23-26).

A: I feel that as Artistic Director, I should have a presence here. But the most interesting thing for me about this job is to present and learn from all the other artists who have something to say. I get a chance to learn; I got to see this guy Kid Koala recently and I was just blown away by the creativity of that show – the improvisational aspect, the visuals, the interaction with the strings. I was amazed. It was one of those things where you wish you could’ve thought of it yourself, but you know you never could have.

Q: This comes back to the whole debate about what a jazz organization should present. What’s your programming philosophy?

A: It’s that we present the best jazz out there. And we present the best improvisational music out there. Some people might not associate all of it with jazz. But if it has that improvisational aspect; for me that’s the key. We’re trying to show the relationship between all these things. You look at the Blind Boys of Alabama; that’s gospel music. But there’s an improvisational aspect to what they do and a lot of that music – gospel – is what informed jazz to begin with. It’s all related. So when you think of jazz, it’s a big umbrella. I see the effects of this music all over the place. You can hear the effects of John Coltrane on electronic music.

Q: Can you give readers a peek into your projects outside SFJAZZ? Are you working on another opera?

A: I’m working on an opera idea and I’ll just give you a little tease. I’m trying to get Walter Isaacson to write a libretto for me, and we’ve been talking about a couple of topics that involve New Orleans.

Q: What are the topics?

A: One is about Louis Armstrong. Another involves a brothel and — oh man, it’s complicated!

Q: I’ll take a guess: It’s set in a brothel in New Orleans a century ago when the music was beginning?

A: Yeah… Maybe!

The SFJAZZ 2024-25 Season begins 9/5. Tickets and more information are available here.

A staff writer at SFJAZZ, Richard Scheinin is a lifelong journalist. He was the San Jose Mercury News' classical music and jazz critic for more than a decade and has profiled scores of public figures, from Ike Turner to Tony La Russa and the Dalai Lama.