papafrog
09-19-2007, 11:05 AM
i got this in an email....
Dear friends:
A bit more on trumpeter Terence Blanchard from my piece in this week's
Village Voice, if only to vent some emotions about our president
(both his and
mine)...
LB
THE VILLAGE VOICE
September 11th, 2007
Mending the Levees
Terence Blanchard plots New Orleans' requiem and rebirth
by Larry Blumenfeld
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0737,blumenfeld,77762,22.html
Sitting in a rented room in the Faubourg-Marigny section of New Orleans,
around the corner from the jazz clubs lining Frenchmen Street, I
thought about
the late-August day that had just passed: the second anniversary of
the floods
resulting from the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina. President George
W. Bush dipped his toe in the city for the occasion-dinner at a Creole
restaurant, a quick address delivered at a Lower Ninth Ward
school-and then slipped
out of town again like a criminal on the run.
I had headphones on, listening to trumpeter Terence Blanchard's new Blue
Note CD, A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina). But also
rattling around
my head was what Blanchard had told me months ago, when I visited his uptown
home: "This president has gotten away with a lot. And in New Orleans, he got
away with murder."
I recall interviewing Blanchard in 2005, shortly after the floods: "For all
those people to be stranded with no federal aid, it's criminal." And after he
watched former FEMA director Michael Brown's testimony on C-SPAN: "It's
insulting." And after Bush failed to mention New Orleans in his State of the
Union address: "Wow! He's bold enough to announce to this city that he's done
with us."
Louis Armstrong once rebuffed President Dwight D. Eisenhower, canceling a
State Department tour over the school- integration controversy in Arkansas.
"The way they are treating my people in the South," Armstrong told newspaper
reporters, "the government can go to hell." Blanchard protested with absence
last fall, opting out of a Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz
reception hosted by
the White House. "I couldn't go," he told me. "Couldn't act like it was
fine."
Yet Blanchard's association with the Monk Institute is now a particular
point of pride: As artistic director of its innovative graduate-level
jazz-performance program, he welcomed a new class of students to his
hometown last month
for their first semester at Loyola University, the program's new home. The
move (which Blanchard helped engineer) is important as both a symbolic and
practical tool toward recovery. Training also as teachers in New
Orleans public
schools, these grad students can make a dent in a daunting problem: a
troubled school system that has nevertheless long been a breeding
ground for jazz
musicians.
Unlike Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis, who left New Orleans for fame and for
good, Blanchard returned to his hometown mid-career, a decade ago. As a film
composer (among others, he's scored Spike Lee's films for 20 years), he's of
singular distinction within jazz's ranks. As a quintet leader, he blends the
compassionate authority of his early employer, Art Blakey, with the
empowering ingenuity of one of his heroes, Miles Davis. As a
trumpeter, his technique
distills the curled phrases and bent tones of his New Orleans predecessors
without a hint of throwback or caricature.
For God's Will, Blanchard adapted his compositions for Lee's 2006
documentary When the Levees Broke into a suite for jazz ensemble and
40-piece
orchestra, making use of all those attributes. He appeared in the
film, too: One
Levees scene found Blanchard escorting his mother back to her home, where she
broke down crying with the realization that everything inside has been
destroyed, right down to the family photos. "Spike's film showed a
very literal
expression of what my family went through," Blanchard says. "Now I can tell a
little more of that story, taking my time and using the language I know best."
Violins voice the storm's fury, woodwinds the foreboding calm of its wake, his
horn the anguished cries of those left stranded. Blanchard's requiem contains
tightly composed passages but also moments during which he pushes his trumpet
beyond its comfortable range. Not screeches, exactly- nothing close to Abbey
Lincoln's screams on Max Roach's 1960 We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, but
angrier and more daring than anything on his previous dozen albums.
The final product sounds like a complete artistic statement, "But the story
in New Orleans goes on," Blanchard says. As he performs the material in city
after city, the telling does too.
Dear friends:
A bit more on trumpeter Terence Blanchard from my piece in this week's
Village Voice, if only to vent some emotions about our president
(both his and
mine)...
LB
THE VILLAGE VOICE
September 11th, 2007
Mending the Levees
Terence Blanchard plots New Orleans' requiem and rebirth
by Larry Blumenfeld
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0737,blumenfeld,77762,22.html
Sitting in a rented room in the Faubourg-Marigny section of New Orleans,
around the corner from the jazz clubs lining Frenchmen Street, I
thought about
the late-August day that had just passed: the second anniversary of
the floods
resulting from the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina. President George
W. Bush dipped his toe in the city for the occasion-dinner at a Creole
restaurant, a quick address delivered at a Lower Ninth Ward
school-and then slipped
out of town again like a criminal on the run.
I had headphones on, listening to trumpeter Terence Blanchard's new Blue
Note CD, A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina). But also
rattling around
my head was what Blanchard had told me months ago, when I visited his uptown
home: "This president has gotten away with a lot. And in New Orleans, he got
away with murder."
I recall interviewing Blanchard in 2005, shortly after the floods: "For all
those people to be stranded with no federal aid, it's criminal." And after he
watched former FEMA director Michael Brown's testimony on C-SPAN: "It's
insulting." And after Bush failed to mention New Orleans in his State of the
Union address: "Wow! He's bold enough to announce to this city that he's done
with us."
Louis Armstrong once rebuffed President Dwight D. Eisenhower, canceling a
State Department tour over the school- integration controversy in Arkansas.
"The way they are treating my people in the South," Armstrong told newspaper
reporters, "the government can go to hell." Blanchard protested with absence
last fall, opting out of a Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz
reception hosted by
the White House. "I couldn't go," he told me. "Couldn't act like it was
fine."
Yet Blanchard's association with the Monk Institute is now a particular
point of pride: As artistic director of its innovative graduate-level
jazz-performance program, he welcomed a new class of students to his
hometown last month
for their first semester at Loyola University, the program's new home. The
move (which Blanchard helped engineer) is important as both a symbolic and
practical tool toward recovery. Training also as teachers in New
Orleans public
schools, these grad students can make a dent in a daunting problem: a
troubled school system that has nevertheless long been a breeding
ground for jazz
musicians.
Unlike Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis, who left New Orleans for fame and for
good, Blanchard returned to his hometown mid-career, a decade ago. As a film
composer (among others, he's scored Spike Lee's films for 20 years), he's of
singular distinction within jazz's ranks. As a quintet leader, he blends the
compassionate authority of his early employer, Art Blakey, with the
empowering ingenuity of one of his heroes, Miles Davis. As a
trumpeter, his technique
distills the curled phrases and bent tones of his New Orleans predecessors
without a hint of throwback or caricature.
For God's Will, Blanchard adapted his compositions for Lee's 2006
documentary When the Levees Broke into a suite for jazz ensemble and
40-piece
orchestra, making use of all those attributes. He appeared in the
film, too: One
Levees scene found Blanchard escorting his mother back to her home, where she
broke down crying with the realization that everything inside has been
destroyed, right down to the family photos. "Spike's film showed a
very literal
expression of what my family went through," Blanchard says. "Now I can tell a
little more of that story, taking my time and using the language I know best."
Violins voice the storm's fury, woodwinds the foreboding calm of its wake, his
horn the anguished cries of those left stranded. Blanchard's requiem contains
tightly composed passages but also moments during which he pushes his trumpet
beyond its comfortable range. Not screeches, exactly- nothing close to Abbey
Lincoln's screams on Max Roach's 1960 We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, but
angrier and more daring than anything on his previous dozen albums.
The final product sounds like a complete artistic statement, "But the story
in New Orleans goes on," Blanchard says. As he performs the material in city
after city, the telling does too.