On the final episode of our series, host Khadija Mbowe is joined by the renowned trumpet player and composer Terence Blanchard. Hear the pair talk like two old friends as they get real about everything from their experiences navigating the opera world to the power that sharing an article has to convey fatherly love.
Get Tickets To See Terence Blanchard Live in Philly on April 7, 2024!
https://www.ensembleartsphilly.org/events-and-tickets/2023-24/kcp/terence-blanchard/
Music from this episode:
BLANCHARD - "Opening Credits," Malcolm X
BLANCHARD - "Peculiar Grace," Fire Shut Up in My Bones, The Metropolitan Opera
BLANCHARD - "Step Dance Sequence," Fire Shut Up in My Bones, The Metropolitan Opera
DVORAK - Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 (“From the New World," The Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s HearTOGETHER series is generously supported by lead corporate sponsor Accordant Advisors. Additional major support has been provided by the Otto Haas Charitable Trust.
On the final episode of our series, host Khadija Mbowe is joined by the renowned trumpet player and composer Terence Blanchard. Hear the pair talk like two old friends as they get real about everything from their experiences navigating the opera world to the power that sharing an article has to convey fatherly love.
Get Tickets To See Terence Blanchard Live in Philly on April 7, 2024!
https://www.ensembleartsphilly.org/events-and-tickets/2023-24/kcp/terence-blanchard/
Music from this episode:
BLANCHARD - "Opening Credits," Malcolm X
BLANCHARD - "Peculiar Grace," Fire Shut Up in My Bones, The Metropolitan Opera
BLANCHARD - "Step Dance Sequence," Fire Shut Up in My Bones, The Metropolitan Opera
DVORAK - Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 (“From the New World," The Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s HearTOGETHER series is generously supported by lead corporate sponsor Accordant Advisors. Additional major support has been provided by the Otto Haas Charitable Trust.
KHADIJA MBOWE: So we can just talk about your previous work, because honestly, you might be one of the most decorated musicians I've ever spoken to.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Really? Okay.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Full stop.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
You haven't talked to many musicians, man.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
No, Terrance. Oh, do you prefer Terrance? Do you prefer Mr. Blanchard? I want to be respectful. Fine,
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Please,
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Terrance. Come on. Now. We made a joke when coming up with the questions and I was like, I kind of just want to ask him, does he walk into his kids' room and be like, I got nominated for two Oscars. What are y'all doing in here?
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
No, no, no, no, no, no. My kids could really care less. I mean, I shouldn't say that. No, they get excited about it, but to me, my youngest daughter always says, I don't understand why people think you're so cool.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
You Know what children will do? They will humble you.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
They will bring you back down to earth.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
You working with Spike Lee? You working on this X, Y, Z soundtrack? Oh, you working with HBO? That's
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Cute. It doesn't matter. As a matter of fact, my youngest daughter, she's a writer and she's really creative. She lives in London. Technically I'm colorblind. I mean, I see major colors, but there are a lot of colors that I don't see. So her nickname for me is Chroma. Crip. That's what she calls me. Chroma. Crip.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
That is so rude. It's always the youngest. How old is she?
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
She's in her early twenties, but she's creative though. I'll give her that. I give her that. She's working on a Master's in London and writing.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Would you say, are all of your kids creative?
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Yes, all of them. All of them are brilliant. Really, really. I lucked out with all of my kids. I feel very blessed with all of them. They're all working hard, very creative people, and contributing to society in a beautiful way.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
It seems like as well though, you have instilled that in them because after all, you are their parent. You have given them a sort of a sense or a space to feel that they can be creative. So I wonder if that's something that you were modeling after what you got from your parents or just this is new territory for you to do?
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Well, I hope that I was an example for them. You know what I mean? Their mothers, my first two kids were from my first wife, so their mothers played a big role in really supporting them and really giving them a lot of confidence because I was on the road a lot, but when I was home, I wasn't the type of dude to come home and then hang out. When I was home, I was home. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I'm most proud of is when I had to go through a parent teacher meeting. When my kids were little, the teacher told my wife that he knows more about his kids than most of the parents who were here all the time. So that made me feel good because when I was home, I was home. I wasn't out in the streets. I stayed home.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Would you say that your dad was like that too for you?
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
My dad, oh my God. My dad was the type of person when I was a little kid and I started taking piano lessons. He would sit on the couch while I practiced the entire time, and he sold insurance, and he always had a pocket full of change. So as soon as he hit the door, I could hear them change jingling in his pocket, man, and I'd be in the back trying to watch the cartoons or just relax or do something, and he'd come in there and he'd tell me as a little kid, he would say, Hey, hey, boy, you know, got a recital in two months? And I'm like, yeah, two months. You need to get in there and practice. You need to come on. Come turn the TV off. Let's go sit down and practice. That was my dad.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Okay. So because he was a musician himself, he was a baritone,
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
He was a baritone. He was an amateur baritone, but he had a beautiful voice, man. He could have been a pro.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
And by amateur, just to clarify, do you mean that he didn't get paid for it and didn't get professional training, was just doing it, he loved
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
It. No, no, no. He got professional training. He learned from a guy named Ola Blanche, B-L-A-N-C-H-E-T, and Mr. Blanchet taught a lot of young African-American men opera in New Orleans. That was his thing. So my dad studied with him, so he studied with a great teacher. He just never got an opportunity to do that, but it was always his passion whenever he got a chance to sing, he would sing. And there were few of those guys. I used to think they were some of the weirdest black men on the planet. When I got older, man, I learned to really respect them because they had a passion for an art form, and they really followed their passion.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
The first time I saw a video of Jesse Norman singing opera, and I had had a voice teacher tell me I should sing opera. I was like, black people don't do that. I was just like, whatcha? I'm going to be a jazz musician.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Well, that was the thing in New Orleans, man, that was so strange for me because we didn't, in the public world, we didn't view black people as being opera singers or interested in opera, but they were a major, major force in the opera world for decades. As a matter of fact, Dr. Norman Francis, who's a friend of mine, he used to be the president of Xavier University. I was talking to him about it. He said, man, back in the sixties, they had a huge opera program at Xavier, and it was so huge. It was basically one of the second largest opera company in the south. Yeah, they would do major productions.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Do you know what happened to that program,
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Like anything else? Money. Money. I mean, it always boils down to resources
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Wow. So I kind of wanted to go back to you though, talking about not to make this a therapy session about your dad in the slightest, but more so.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
That's okay. More
KHADIJA MBOWE:
So I appreciate your openness too, but he would tell you, all right, you got a recital in two years. It's time. I'm kidding.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
It felt like that
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Right time to start practicing, but was he the one that got you into music or were you the one who kind of gravitated towards it and then he saw it and was like, all right, we got to nurture this.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
No, it was me. I grew up in New Orleans, so you're going to see live performance at some point in your life. You're going to see musicians playing somewhere in a parade at a dance or a concert someplace. So I remember I started taking piano lessons when I was a kid, when I was about five years old, because I used to try to sit at the piano and play Batman and didn't know what I was doing, and my grandparents were like, well, look man, if the boy going to sit down and please get him some lessons so he could play something, at least we'd like to hear, you know what I mean? So they started me on lessons when I was about five years old, and then when I was in fourth grade in elementary school, there was a guy named Alvin Alcorn great trumpet player in New Orleans who came to my elementary school and gave us a demonstration of playing New Orleans music.
And I went home and I laughed. It's funny now. It wasn't funny then, but I went home and told my dad, dad, I want to play the trumpet. Now, you got to imagine in the black household in New Orleans, Louisiana, when your parents had just rented a piano for you to have in your house, that was a very, very interesting day in the Blanchard household. I can't even tell you what was said throughout that conversation, but to their credit, they came back and my dad said, okay, if you're going to play the trumpet, we'll get you a trumpet, but you better practice. You make sure you stay on it. And I tried to do it as best I could.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
It's so interesting to me, and I'm not going to say black people are a monolith, but it's so interesting to me how many black parents are reluctant to have their children go into music. In general. My parents were definitely not about it, but when they support you, they're like, oh, you're going to be the best at this, get to practicing
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Oh my God, listen, lemme tell you. My dad was like, you made the decision to do this. Right? I mean, not to belabor the issue about my dad, but one of the things I learned from my dad was that he was a workaholic. My dad sold insurance during the day and worked as a hospital orderly at night, and even when he had free time, he had a calculator and a table set up in the bedroom, and he was always balancing the books. So I rarely saw my dad just sit down and relax. That just wasn't something, I have a lot of memories of most of my memories of him working or going to work. As a matter of fact, at a certain point when he was working the two jobs, the only time we would spend together was when he would wake me up, he'd wake me up at 10 o'clock to watch the Honeymooners for a half an hour before he had to go to his shift at the hospital. He worked overnight at the hospital, and that was the only time we could spend together. So he'd wake me up and then tell me I had to go back to sleep.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
So as a side note, you're being so vulnerable with your dad. My dad is also a busy person, but the way, it's so interesting how dads connect in their love language without saying anything because the way my dad will do stuff is either we sit and watch the news together or a documentary in silence, or he'll send me an article about something, and that's how I know he's thinking of me.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
It's funny because I'm the same way with my kids now. My parents aren't the type of parents that say, I love you all the time. Same. But my dad showed it that way. My middle daughter, she loves ugly dogs for some reason. I don't know. Where did she, I don't know where she got that. So whenever, and as a result, she sends me these things. So you know that algorithm, they pop up on my IG all the time, so I'm always sending them back to her. I'm like, what? Can you please stop sending me these dogs with the hanging out on the side? Oh, it's ridiculous. You know what I mean? And then my son, me and my son, we're sports fanatics. So we watch our pelicans and the New Orleans Saints and we live in misery. Most of the,
KHADIJA MBOWE:
I mean, listen, I grew up in Atlanta. I can't be an Atlanta sports fan and don't do me, don't do me. Because I heard about the rivalry I'm forgetting on a music podcast. Anyway, that was a sports corner. Thank you for joining us. We can put some little sports music here.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
And now back to the music channel.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Back to the music, because I want to actually talk about your projects because I said to you at the beginning of this conversation and I said it with my chest. I mean, you are one of the most decorated musicians I have ever spoken to. Not just because of the nominations, but because of how much work you do, how much you put out actually, and how amazing the work is. So I got my bias, but I wonder if you have your own, are there three projects? I love the number three. Are there three projects that stick out to you that you loved working on? Either for the process, for the result, both.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Probably Malcolm X would be number one, just because of the story and the opportunity and the size of the project. The size of it scared me to death. The importance of it scared me to death, and I just wanted to make sure I didn't drop the ball on that project. When it comes to making records, that's probably when the levies broke a Tale of God's will, the music from the documentary. And then the first time my second opera went to the Met, that was a crowning achievement, not just for me though, just for the community itself. I think one of the things that really made me excited about that project was to watch all of these singers take ownership of this piece and to create a vehicle which allowed them to display their talents in a different way. Because being an opera singer, you're always told to turn off your background.l
If you come from the church or if you were a jazz singer or an RB singer, you're constantly told to turn that stuff off. And I told them to turn it on because this was a contemporary piece. And all of that stuff was relevant to the story. And I'll never forget, angel Blue came in and she sang this Aria Peculiar Grace in rehearsal, and there wasn't a dry eye in the room just because of what she did.
MUSIC CLIP
KHADIJA MBOWE VOICEOVER: That was Angel Blue performing Destiny’s Act I aria, Peculiar Grace, in the Opening Night performance of Fire Shut Up In My Bones at Metropolitan Opera, conducted by Yannick (Yah-knee-que) Nézet-Séguin (!)
TERENCE BLANCHARD: I mean, going to the Met obviously was an incredible experience, but it was the way that we went to the Met and what occurred, and watching those brothers in that dance troop get a standing ovation every night for doing a stomp show on the stage at the Met was incredible. And just watching all of the people who came to support. There were people who had never been to the Met before who had come. And I'll never forget, there was a woman that, she was one of my church members from New Orleans, and she had moved up north to Philly, I think it was. She got on a train and was in a wheelchair. She was 92 years old, and she came to the show and she was proud of what we had put on a stage.
That was a huge moment for me in my career. It was probably the biggest of all time for me.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Okay. So many things, because when I was seeing the clips of fire shut up in my bones, oh my God, every clip I saw online, angel singing, I was crying. And a fun fact about Angel, she was in Toronto doing Mimi at the Canadian Opera Company in 2018 or 19, I believe. And I slid into her dms to invite her to my third year recital, just my university recital. And she showed up. No
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Kidding.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
With a gift. No kidding. And people were like, what? And ever since then, we've kept in touch. If she's in town, she'll message. She's just, so, this is just a side tangent of Angel Blue stanning because she's just such an incredible talent and so genuinely, genuinely nice.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
But that's the other thing that I loved about that moment at the Met, because one of the things that it bugged me, man, it bugged me to No End. There was a guy who interviewed me and he said, do you think your opera is going to influence young African-American people to sing opera? And I went, bro, you crazy. I'm like, black people have been singing opera for generations. I said, you don't know this because you don't cover them. I said, but here's the thing that I love about all of these singers. They support each other in a way that I've never seen before. I said, if you want find out about some of these singers, just find one and ask us. And they'll clue you into everybody else. They don't have any shame in their game. They'll let you know what's going on. And I love that. I love that. I saw it from the very first day of rehearsal at the Met. It was incredible. I've never experienced anything like that. And I always look forward to working with them because they're extremely talented and beautiful souls.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
It's also everything that you're saying about the sense of community. Yeah. Other black singers that I know, this is just what we do.every other black singer I know if we see each other, we're like, yo, what are you doing? I probably wouldn't be good for this, but I know a girl who would, or You should talk to this person. Exactly. And also being in the rehearsal space, I just remember seeing footage of that. I remember seeing footage of even Porgy and Best l=how healing it feels. And when you said that in classical music, they tell a lot of singers, get rid of the jazz. Get rid of the gospel. That's what I experienced too. When I first started. I And it, it took a while to get back to singing the styles of music that I sang before to help me get back into my body into what it should sound like instead of making it clinical. It's How does it feel coming through
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
You? Well, look, lemme tell you, it is interesting because the first day of Rehearsal for Fire, we broke down into a circle in that big room. We broke everybody down. Yes. And we just started talking about the importance of the moment. And the stories that came out were incredible. Latonya was talking about how this was the first role in her career that she really could relate to. There were some young guys, they were in their teens who were young singers, and they felt validated being in the room with other African-American singers because of the bullying he was receiving at school.
Other people were talking about just where their careers were at this time to be able to do a piece like this. And we just started talking about the significance of this story being on the Met stage. It was an incredible moment. We talked for about an hour before they sang a note just about that. Then it got into some things that had nothing to do with music. It had everything to do with community. That was a beautiful moment in time.
I'll never forget the night of the premiere. You're always nervous. You don't know how people are going to react or anything like that. You know how you feel about it, but you don't know if the general public's going to feel that way. And when those people stood up on their feet, it was something I can't explain because it was than just an opera. It wasn't just that it was a social statement,It was a fashion statement. Everything.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
It was incredible to witness, truly. Thank you. Like the fomo, man. The FOMO was so, I was just like not the Met. Finally. Finally.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Oh, you know what was funny though? You know what was funny? You know the number of friends of mine, male friends of mine, they kept, man, you got me, bro. You got me, bro.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
That's how they say it too. They're not going to do too much, but they'll let you know.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Right. I was trying to, hold on, bro. I was trying to hold on, bro. But you got me, man. That little, what do we call it? That little boy man, that little
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Boy man, that little boy. I was shedding a few thug tears. Just a tear. Just a single one.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Exactly. And these are hard dudes, man. Oh my God. It was running. It was pretty funny.
what really made it for me was the number of people who have always been intimidated by the idea of what the Met was and never went. But they had walked through the doors to come see Fire and Fire helped demystify the Met for them. As a matter of fact, there was a little study done that I felt proud about a lot of people who had come to see Fire and had come to see Opera for the first time at the Met and bought tickets to other performances of other shows. So that means that we're spreading the love, and I think it's a testament to an underserved community that people have been overlooking in the art world for a long time. You know what I mean? There's a community out there of not just Americans, but all the other folks too that really haven't received the love from the opera world, and hopefully that's changing. You see, Peter's going to do Malcolm X next, and then there's some other things that are coming. So hopefully, and I hope all of those productions are extremely successful. I mean, extremely. I hope all of them sell out because then it will start to tell the tale of the folks that have been overlooked in the opera world for a long time, and it's going to make their whole industry have to take a second look at their productions.
My last question for you, because this has been so, oh my God, time has flowed by. I looked up and I was like, ah, you are
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Busy.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
My last question for you, I'm going to do something that hopefully you don't feel embarrassed by, but I'm going to read something that you've said back to you.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Oh,
KHADIJA MBOWE:
I know, I know. It's okay. It was very poignant. Okay, all over here. You said you get to a certain age when you ask who is going to stand out and speak out for us, then you look around and realize that 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 out here to try to correct the whole thing. I'm just trying to speak the truth.And the thing that stuck out to me in that was you saying that you're trying to speak the truth, and I love a little bit of philosophy, so I wanted to ask you, especially in a world that's so polarized and so different, what exactly does truth mean?
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
Well, that is the question because it seems as though we have forgotten what that means. Truth is the undisputable fact of what happens in life. Truth is not something necessarily that makes me feel good or something that I like. It's the fact that two plus two will never change. That will always equal four. There's nothing that you can do to change that indisputable fact. Right? And to me, that's what we have to look at when we're dealing with each other in our communities. It's become really fashionable to kind of bend the truth. And now you see in our political situation, it's damn imperative for some people to never tell the truth.
It's an unfortunate thing because deep down in our souls, our souls know the truth. That's what we trying to avoid sometimes because of our selfish nature to want to gain things, but we have to really look at what's really going on in the universe and be honest about it. Look, my hair's turned gray, not one of my favorite things that has ever happened in my life. You know what I mean? But me dying, it is not going to change the fact underneath it. It's always gray. So I have to come to terms with that and understand that's all part of the cycle. It's all part of this experience on the planet, and I think all too often we don't want to delve into the future. The future is scary. Change is scary for a lot of people, but that's what happens. My trumpet teacher used to tell me all the time, he said, man, you're never standing still. You're never standing still. And when people try to keep traditions, it doesn't make sense because the world is always rotating and moving forward. So you think you're standing still, but you're actually moving backward. So you always have to maintain a level of growth just to be current and not shy away from it or be afraid of it.
This experiment of being human is a beautiful thing if you really accept it, understanding that this is just a portion of our existence. That's what I believe. I mean, this is not the end all. This is just an experience for us to have. And if we look at it in that way, then we can relax and not try to hoard power. We can share power, we can share experiences and appreciate all of our differences as opposed to trying to make all of us be the same or put all of us on the same page. It's ridiculous and it's not going to work. It never worked. The undisputable truth is that change is part of our experience.
KHADIJA MBOWE:
Terence, thank you so much. That was a word.
TERENCE BLANCHARD:
No, thank you. Thank you, thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I appreciate the time. It's been fun.
To play us out, I hope you’ll enjoy a bit of the very first piece of music we featured on this show way back in 2020– The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nezet Seguin performing Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 (“From the New World”).