Terence Blanchard

Boundary-breaking and genre-defying, Terence Blanchard is recognized globally as a trumpet soloist and a prolific composer for film, television, opera, Broadway, orchestra, and for his own ensembles.

An eight-time Grammy winner, Blanchard became only the second African American composer after Quincy Jones to be nominated twice in the Best Original Score category at the 2021 Academy Awards. Alongside his work composing scores for over 20 Spike Lee projects, Blanchard’s music has created strong backdrops to human stories like The Woman King, One Night in Miami…, Eve’s Bayou, the HBO drama series Perry Mason, and Apple TV’s docuseries They Call Me Magic (for which Blanchard received an Emmy nomination).

Blanchard’s second opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, received its Metropolitan Opera premiere in September 2021, making it the first opera by an African American composer to appear at the Met in its 138-year history. The recording of those performances received the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording, and the opera returned to the Met for a highly anticipated second run in April 2024. Blanchard’s first opera, Champion, was performed at the Met in April 2023 to widespread critical acclaim. It received the Grammy for Best Opera Recording in 2024.

Blanchard’s extensive recording catalog includes Absence, a tribute to Wayne Shorter created in collaboration with The E-Collective and Turtle Island Quartet. Absence received Grammy nominations in November 2021 for Best Instrumental Jazz Album and Best Improvised Jazz Solo for Blanchard. Blanchard’s recorded work has placed him at the forefront of giving voice to human rights, civil rights, and racial injustice, including the 2016 album Breathless, an elegy for Eric Garner.

Born in New Orleans in 1962, Blanchard is a musical polymath who launched his solo career in the 1990s. Since then, he has released 20 solo albums, garnered 15 Grammy nominations, composed music for over 60 films, and received 10 major commissions. He was named a 2024 NEA Jazz Master as well as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and currently serves as the executive artistic director for SF Jazz, the largest non-profit jazz presenter in the world.