Terence Blanchard and the E-Collective - Opening Nights

APRIL 5, 2024

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

TERENCE BLANCHARD FEAT. THE E-COLLECTIVE

CHANGING THE LIVES THAT CHANGE THE WORLD

Carlos

PLATINUM

GOLD

ERIC

SILVER

MIKEY

BRONZE

WELCOME FROM THE INTERIM DIRECTOR

Greetings and welcome to the continuation of the 2023–24 Opening Nights at Florida State University Season Offerings. I’m pleased to have the opportunity to monitor the remaining programs for this season while wrapping up the curation of those events that will welcome you in 2024–25.

The Opening Nights staff is solid and working diligently to make certain that your expectations from our performances are met with the highest quality of deliverance.

Recently, Opening Nights sponsored Pink Martini with China Forbes. To say that it was a high energy evening would be a gross understatement. Gus Corbella, the former Chair of the Opening Nights Development Council received a hand-written note from an audience member lauding the concert from the opening notes to the finale which led to a conga line through the aisles of Ruby Diamond Concert Hall. In fact, the line was so long that once it had made its initial loop, it met the end of the line coming towards it. A “head-on conga collision” if you will. The

note indicated that the gentleman had been waiting years to see Pink Martini live, to the point that he drove from Central Florida for the evening. Gus, appropriately sent the note to the entirety of the Development Council with the header “Why We Do What We Do!”

The above couldn’t be better summarized. In essence, why we do what we do is that it’s part of both our personal and professional DNA.

My hope is that why we’re doing what we’re doing is satisfying your value in the live performing arts as a means of communicating cultural riches and offerings in a world that so desperately needs them now.

From my heart, it’s an honor to be back with you.

Warmly,

Michael Blachly Interim Director, Opening Nights

THEATRE TCC! 2023-24 SEASON COME JOURNEY WITH US!

Something Wicked This Way Comes

By Ray Bradbury

When the carnival comes to town, two boys unearth the terrifying and horrible secrets that lurk within Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show and learn the consequences of wishes, as a sinister and evil force is at work in Green Town, Illinois.

October 12-14 at 8 p.m.

October 20 & 21 at 8 p.m.

October 22 at 2 p.m.

The Shape of Things

By Neil Labute

A young student drifts into an ever-changing relationship with an art major while his best friend’s engagement crumbles, unleashing a drama that peels back the skin of two modern-day relationships.

November 16-18 at 8 p.m.

December 1 & 2 at 8 p.m.

December 3 at 2 p.m.

Legally Blonde

Book by Heather Hach

Music and Lyrics By Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin

The ultimate tribute to girl power, Legally Blonde will take you from the UCLA sorority house to the Harvard halls of justice with the timely coming-of-age story of Broadway’s brightest heroine.

April 4-6 at 8 p.m.

April 12 & 13 at 8 p.m.

April 14 at 2 p.m.

Florida State University

Richard McCullough President

Opening Nights Staff

Michael Blachly Interim Director

Allison Jordan Development Director

Grace Atkins Program & Operations Manager

Brad Lister Business & Patron Services Manager

Calla MacNamara Education & Engagement Manager

Noelle Enright Marketing & Communications Associate

Amanda Cole

Senior Marketing Designer, University Marketing

Rodney H. Johnson Director of Digital Design & UX, University Marketing

Opening Nights Development Council

Eric Friall, Chair

Ron Sachs, Vice Chair

Gus Corbella, Immediate-Past Chair

Susan Stratton, Secretary

Kathleen Daly

Brooke Hallock

Heather Mitchell

Nan Nagy

Tom Nelson

Florida State University Partners

Office of the President

College of Fine Arts

College of Music

English Department

Challenger Learning Center

FAMU-FSU College of Engineering

University Relations

University Communications

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

APRIL

5 Terence Blanchard featuring The E-Collective & Turtle Island Quartet Jazz

6 Dinosaur World Live! Family, Educational

18 Chain of Parks Art Festival

Presenting Artist Dean Mitchell Visual Art

27 Rising Appalachia Rock, Blues

MAY

1 Indigo Girls Rock

Cover photo by Cedric Angeles

Opening Nights, Opening Doors is a partner program of Prime Meridian Bank, FSU Opening Nights, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Big Bend. Now in its third year, the program provides on-campus experiences for Club members to inspire a vision of future opportunities in the areas of engineering, nursing, hospitality, and (coming soon) media and the arts.

Herb & Mary Jervis

Congratulations Opening Nights for fostering the Arts in Tallahassee for the past 26 years.

The students, faculty, and staff of FSU and the citizens of north Florida have been enriched by your efforts.

We eagerly await what the next 26 years will bring.

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Proud Supporters of Opening Nights

FRIDAY, APRIL 5

Ruby Diamond Concert Hall • 7:30 PM

Terence Blanchard feat. The E-Collective & Turtle Island Quartet

In Collaboration with FSU College of Music

The composer and renowned trumpet player has been a consistent artistic force for making powerful musical statements concerning painful American tragedies—past and present. Terence is unique in the jazz world as an artist whose creative endeavors go far beyond the genre into film scoring, crafting television series soundscapes and conceiving grand operas that have been recognized at the highest levels of art appreciation. In addition, Blanchard has been at the forefront of giving voice in his works to socio-cultural issues and racial injustices of our time. “Like anybody else, I like to play feel-good party music, but sometimes my music is about the reality of where we are,” says Blanchard who today lives in Los Angeles as well as in his native New Orleans. “I’m just trying to speak the truth.”

Continued on pg. 19

“...a lush and dramatic soundscape...”

Sponsor

Photo by Cedric Angeles

Terence Blanchard

Continued from pg. 17

Born in New Orleans in 1962, Blanchard began playing piano at the age of 5. He added trumpet three years later. In summer music camps, he became friends with Wynton Marsalis and Branford Marsalis. After a teenage stint touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, in 1982 Wynton recommended him to take his place in Art Blakley’s Jazz Messengers. Blanchard joined and served until 1986 as the band’s music director—the same role Shorter, the band’s primary composer, filled from 1959–1963. “With Art, we played all of Wayne’s tunes, and we loved them,” says Blanchard. “Oh my God, his music was amazing. He and Thelonious Monk set the table for me for composition.” That fit with Blakley who wanted his band members to write new music to keep the band fresh. Blanchard estimates that he wrote between 5–10 tunes for the band—some of which were never played or recorded. While Blanchard continued to be a Jazz Messenger until 1990, he and fellow band member Donald Harrison formed a quintet that recorded seven albums for different labels. Blanchard began his solo career at CBS Records with his 1991 eponymous album.

At the same time, he began working with Spike Lee, first performing on the soundtracks to Do the Right Thing and Mo’ Better Blues. Blanchard’s score for Jungle Fever in 1991 marked the beginning of the long-standing collaboration. Blanchard was nominated for a Best Score Oscar for Lee’s 2018 film BlacKkKlansman and 2020’s Da 5 Bloods. He became the second African American composer nominated twice in the category, duplicating Quincy Jones’ honors for In Cold Blood in 1967 and The Color Purple in 1985. While Blanchard says he and Lee have lost count of how many projects they’ve worked on together, it’s estimated to be in the range of twenty, including 17 films and three television projects. Highlights include

1992’s Malcolm X and the 2006 Hurricane Katrina documentary film, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Lee told Variety that their partnership is “a match made in heaven.” He added, “Recording Terence’s score is one of my favorite parts of the whole process… For me, my films aren’t complete until the score is in.” Blanchard marvels at Lee’s filmmaking. “Spike is fearless,” he says. “He tells stories that need to be told. When there are injustices, the best way to rectify them is to open people’s eyes up to them. When I see his next scripts, I think, damn, he’s done it again. I’ve learned so much from him. He inspires me to grow.”

Beside working with Lee, Blanchard composed music for two Kasi Lemmons films (1997’s Eve’s Bayou and 2019’s Harriet), Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Broadway play The Motherfucker with the Hat (2011), George Lucas’s film Red Tails (2012), the 2012 Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, and the 2021 National Geographic limited series Genius: Aretha. In 2020, he contributed to the HBO television revival of the Perry Mason series, working with director Tim Van Patten. “This ain’t your daddy’s Perry Mason,” says Blanchard who worked on the musical backdrop of each episode. “The teaser for the series had big band music, but it sounded dated. I developed scores that were like the shows: a mixture of the old and the new.” The center of gravity to all Blanchard’s works is the undergirding of his beautiful, provocative, inspiring jazz recordings. The same holds true now as it did early in his career in 1994 when he told DownBeat: “Writing for film is fun, but nothing can beat being a jazz musician, playing a club, playing a concert.”

In 2015, Blanchard formed his revolutionary jazz band E-Collective creatively proficient at layering grooves fueled by funk, rock, R&B and the blues. Its first Blue Note Records album, Breathless, was a musical protest expression instigated by the “I can’t breathe” pleas by Eric Garner who died in 2014 as a result of police

PERINATAL

Dr. Adanna Amanze

Jonathan Brantley

Janet R. Thornton

brutality against an African American—it presaged the George Floyd horrors of the future. As in past E-Collective recordings, on the new album Absence, Blanchard gives free reign to his synth-inflected ensemble to stretch as a band. “I give them the room to explore as composers and arrangers,” says the leader. “It’s important for the band itself as well as for my own growth to develop new ways of playing other people’s music. The guys do things that I would have never thought. We try to create something unique.” Regarding his attachment to artistic works of conscience, he says, “You get to a certain age when you ask, ‘Who’s going to stand up and speak out for us?’ Then you look around and realize that the James Baldwins, Muhammad Alis and Dr. Kings are no longer here…and begin to understand that it falls on you. I’m not trying to say I’m here to try to correct the whole thing. I’m just trying to speak the truth like Max Roach with his We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, John Coltrane playing ‘Alabama,’ even Louis Armstrong talking about what was going on with his people any time he was interviewed. Then there’s Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter who live by their Buddhist philosophy and try to expand the conscience of their communities. I’m standing on all of their shoulders.” Blanchard told one scribe, “Music and art have the power to change hearts and souls.” That sums up his social and spiritual mission.

Blanchard’s truth flourished in 2021, which was a banner year for him. He was nominated for an Oscar for his film score writing and arranging Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, marking his second Academy Awards nomination. He also collaborated with Lee on composing the music for the director’s eight-hour series on the aftermath of 9/11 on HBO NYC Epicenters 9/11–20211/2. Plus, he scored Regina King’s feature directorial debut, One Night in Miami. Other recent film projects include Father of the Bride starring Andy Garcia and Gloria Estefan, directed by Gary Alazraki and The Woman King starring Viola Davis and directed

by Gina Prince Bythewood.

Perhaps Blanchard’s most challenging and fulfilling endeavor has been his entry into the world of opera. Blanchard’s first piece, Champion, premiered at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2013. In his soulful score, Blanchard captures the life and struggles in the early ‘60s of African American welterweight champion Emile Griffith as he deals with a tragedy in his career as well as his bisexuality. The libretto was by Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cristofer. Champion premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in April of 2023 with a larger production and score. Griffith was played by FSU alumnus Ryan Speedo Green.

“I do love opera,” says Blanchard. “My father was an amateur baritone who was always singing. I would listen to La Bohème and hear how Puccini wrote melodic lines. I’ve been trying to find that in my own life—to bring the culture of jazz into opera. With my works, I’m attempting to have African American voices that come from the church to bring the music into a personal level.”

His second “opera in jazz,” Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on the best-selling 2014 memoir of The New York Times journalist Charles M. Blow, with the libretto written by Kasi Lemmons, Fire Shut Up in My Bones explores Blow’s struggles to transcend and overcome a cycle of violence. The orchestration is conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and stars Angel Blue, Latonia Moore, and Will Liverman and opened New York’s Metropolitan Opera House 2021–2022 season—the first time a project by an African American composer graced the Met’s stage in its 136-year history. Blanchard’s renown as an educator continued to be recognized in his 2019 position as the Kenny Burrell Chair in Jazz Studies at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music after serving as artistic director of The Berklee College of Music, the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami and The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.

Law Office of Linda P. Bailey, P.A.

Gus

Berger Singerman proudly supports Florida State University's Opening Nights and its efforts in bolstering arts education within the Tallahassee community

Dinosaur

Dean Mitchell

Indigo Girls