Avoiding the Obvious: Terence Blanchard, the E-Collective, and SFJAZZ

Terence Blanchard, who is one of the greatest musicians to emerge from one of the greatest music cities, New Orleans, still remembers vividly when he knew that Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster of biblical proportions. “I’ll never forget it, man,” begins the trumpeter and composer, 62, who was named SFJAZZ’s Executive Artistic Director in 2023. “We’d evacuated to Atlanta. I turned on the news and Anderson Cooper was talking about how New Orleans is underwater. I’m like, ‘Come on, man, stop overblowing it. It’s always underwater; we always flood.’"

“Then he showed this one picture,” Blanchard continues, “from the Circle Food Store, which is in the middle of town. It’s not near the lake; it’s not near the river. When I saw 11 feet of water there, I realized the magnitude of the problem.”

Creatively, Blanchard reflected on the agony and humanity of the Katrina experience in profound ways: first with his score to the HBO documentary When the Levees Broke, directed by his longtime friend and collaborator Spike Lee; then, expanding on that music, with his 2007 Blue Note release A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina). Featuring Blanchard’s intrepid working group augmented by orchestral strings, A Tale of God’s Will captured the Crescent City’s unshakable Afro-Caribbean heritage and Katrina’s monumental tragedy with a poignancy worthy of the great Romantic composers.

The album won a GRAMMY, but its quality and impact transcend awards. Today, it stands as one of the most important jazz albums of the 2000s, and a crowning moment in Blanchard’s lengthy career. Considering his plentiful other achievements — he is the first Black composer to have an opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera, to name one — that’s saying something. Perhaps more than anything, however, A Tale of God’s Will remains an intensely personal meditation. “That music always holds a special place in my heart,” he says. “As a matter of fact, a lot of times when we’re performing it, I get emotional.”

Blanchard will revisit this tour de force at SFJAZZ on Jan. 24 and 25, as part of a special run of performances melding his E-Collective and San Francisco’s own Turtle Island String Quartet. On Jan. 23, those collaborative ensembles will perform music from Blanchard’s acclaimed 2005 album Flow. On the final night, Jan. 26, they’ll be joined by Dianne Reeves — “the premier jazz vocalist of our time,” says Blanchard, without hyperbole. Though the program for that show is still in the works at press time — “I have some ideas, but I don’t want to tell,” Blanchard says — concertgoers can expect a rare, familial warmth. “She’s like my sister, man,” the trumpeter says, before recalling the time they went bowling on a Japanese tour. “I was talking so much trash, dude,” he begins, cracking up. “I just threw gutter balls all day.” For a preview of their rapport, listen to Blanchard’s 2001 singers project, Let’s Get Lost, on which Reeves’ regal presence comes across as an analogue to the stunning trumpet playing — radiant technique applied to a sound that glows with equal parts power and comfort.

Blanchard’s E-Collective, which is now a decade old, blends the rhythmic flexibility and advanced harmony of 21st-century jazz with rock sonics, touches of contemporary R&B groove, classical influences and other elements. It’s tempting to call it Blanchard’s “fusion” outfit, but its brooding, cinematic aura makes it utterly unique. “They play with a sense of drama,” Blanchard says of his band. “They know how to create these ebbs and flows of emotion.” At SFJAZZ in January, the E-Collective will feature longtime members — guitarist Charles Altura, bassist David Ginyard Jr. and drummer Oscar Seaton — along with a newer face, Julian Pollack, “an amazing pianist and sound designer,” says Blanchard.

Blanchard is a diligent student of the best jazz-rock in history — he mentions Weather Report, Herbie Hancock, Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra, along with Hendrix — but E-Collective better evokes the exploratory spirit of those groups than any particular sound. “As we started to do [the E-Collective], we didn’t even know how to classify what it was that we were doing,” says Blanchard. “We didn’t know what to tell people.”

You might apply the same sentiments to the Turtle Island Quartet, who formed in the Bay Area in the mid-1980s and spent the ensuing decades exploding the parameters of the contemporary string quartet. Founded by violinist David Balakrishnan, Turtle Island proved both innovative, taking on the repertoire and loose-limbed interplay of jazz while tackling a staggering range of music, and brilliantly retrogressive: By tapping into improvisation, original composition and a general atmosphere of spontaneity, they uncovered classical history that conservatory culture had long obscured.

As with many of Blanchard’s concepts, the story of the E-Collective and Turtle Island joining up begins with Wayne Shorter, the late saxophonist and jazz philosopher that Blanchard continues to regard as his lodestar. “I wanted to do a love letter to Wayne before he passed,” says the trumpeter. “We wanted to show him how much we loved him.” As Blanchard explains, that meant interpreting Shorter’s tunes, but more importantly, it meant new original music. “Because that’s Wayne’s thing,” Blanchard says. “Wayne is like, don’t tell me what you got; show me what you got.”

The E-Collective’s pianist at the time, Fabian Almazan, wanted to write for string quartet, and Blanchard’s wife and manager, Robin Burgess, suggested the trumpeter consider Turtle Island. “When they came on board,” Blanchard says, “it just blew up. We hit it off instantly.” The resultant Blue Note album, 2021’s Absence, is a breakthrough in the long and checkered history of projects combining small-group jazz and strings. The sense of immersion, of seamlessness, between the groups is remarkable; throughout, you wonder if the E-Collective crafted orchestration for the string quartet or vice versa. “It’s all about staying away from the obvious,” Blanchard says of that chemistry. “Stay away from the clichés.”

The album-based programs return Blanchard to another era of his career, and to another luminous working band. Flow, produced by Herbie Hancock, evinces a sense of virtuosity and versatility similar to the E-Collective, though it’s less willfully soul-stirring. Between that album and God’s Will, Blanchard nurtured talents that became best-of-generation players and bandleaders (not to mention Blue Note recording artists): guitarist Lionel Loueke, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Derrick Hodge, drummer Kendrick Scott.

The trumpeter holds mentorship as an ethic, in the way that his mentor Art Blakey did — by continuously seeking out and employing new young musicians, and encouraging them to compose for his group. Blanchard was still a teenager when he replaced Wynton Marsalis in the legendary drummer’s Jazz Messengers, for which he also served as musical director and wrote tunes that kicked off Blakey’s LPs in the first half of the 1980s. “That’s what Art Blakey did for us,” says Blanchard. “He just gave us a shot, man.” In conversation, you understand why Blanchard’s groups have become a kind of jazz graduate school, a lesson in generosity for bandleaders, and a launch pad for major careers. He comes across as a thoughtful, serious man, but with sweetness and empathy at his core.

Above all, he wants his musicians to find themselves. “When Kendrick Scott joined the band,” Blanchard recalls, “he said, ‘Man, what records should I check out?’ I said, ‘None of them. Don’t check out any of them. Because I want you to be you. I don’t want you to be like anything I’ve heard or done.'”

Blanchard brings that goodwill to his work with SFJAZZ. On the evening before the concerts begin, Jan. 22, Blanchard will host a Listening Party in the Miner Auditorium (streamed live at sfjazz.org), where he’ll play recordings, offer insight into the weekend’s performances and, he hopes, work into a robust dialogue with the crowd. “I think we [at SFJAZZ] have one of the most educated audiences that I could perform for,” he says.

The trumpeter is also looking forward to the Jan. 16 installment of his UpSwing series, a double bill featuring two stellar alto saxophonists: Tia Fuller, a dynamic bandleader whose credits include a stretch in Beyoncé’s touring band; and Grace Kelly, whose shows mix agile bebop-rooted chops with vocals and the touch of an experienced entertainer. UpSwing began, Blanchard explains, because he wanted to give terrific rising and mid-career artists some shine by presenting them on the grand Miner Auditorium stage. In the early 1990s, he says, when he made his Columbia Records debut, there was infrastructure in place to elevate his profile: radio rotation, advertising in record shops, marketing support that allowed him to tour successfully. “You were just kind of everywhere,” he says, “and people were inquisitive.”

“I’ve been telling my staff, ‘We have to pick up the slack from those times when the record companies could really help break artists,’” he says.

Of course Blanchard, ever the mentor, also wants to elevate his staff: “I want people to know … we have an amazing staff of young, very creative people. That’s the thing that’s got me excited about the job. I’m touring with creative musicians who have ideas about music and really help to push things forward — then the same thing is happening at SFJAZZ. You know, man, there’s some young people over there with brilliant ideas.”

Terence Blanchard and the E-Collective with the Turtle Island Quartet performs 1/23 with music from his album Flow, 1/24-25 with material from A Tale of God’s Will, and on 1/26 with guest Dianne Reeves. Tickets and more information are available here. The 1/24 performance will be livestreamed at sfjazz.org as part of the Fridays Live series. View the concert here. Tickets and Information for Terence Blanchard's 1/22 listening party are available here, which will be streamed live at sfjazz.org. Tickets and more information on Terence Blanchard's UpSwing series are available here. 

Evan Haga is the Senior Content Writer for Music & Arts, part of the Guitar Center Company. He was previously the editor-in-chief of JazzTimes magazine and an editor and curator at the music-streaming platform TIDAL. He lives with his wife and daughter in Maryland.