(Originally published June 4, 2023)
A new epoch in American Art and Culture emerges with Terrance Blanchard being named the new Artistic Director of SFJAZZ! New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), under direction of Wynton Marsalis, and the Bay area’s San Francisco Jazz Collective (SFJAZZ) are the epicenter of Jazz music globally.
Blanchard, a native New Orleanean, has been nominated for two Academy Awards for composing the scores for Spike Lee’s films BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020). He has won five Grammy Awards from fourteen nominations.
From 2000 to 2011, Blanchard served as Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. In 2011, he was named artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami, and in 2015, he became a visiting scholar in Jazz composition at the Berklee College of Music. In 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), named Blanchard to its Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies, where he remained until 2023.
The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged Blanchard’s opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones in its 2021–2022 season, the first opera by an African American composer in the organization’s history.[1][2]And this Spring 2023, Blanchard’s opera Champion was performed at the Met.
With this rapid ascension of Jazz well into the 21st century, America’s cultural production of new and reimagined Jazz compositions continues affirmation of Antonin Dvorak’s 20th-century observation. Dvorak firmly believed that America’s original cultural contribution to Western civilization lay fundamentally in the original music of Black and Indigenous Americans.
“Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) observed that Black music would be the foundation of a ‘great and noble’ school of American classical music. Dvorak lived in the United States from 1892 to 1895, recruited to help create a national music conservatory in New York. As he had done at home in Bohemia, he went in search of homegrown music. He quickly concluded that in America, homegrown meant music created by Black and Indigenous people.” (Source Washington Post 12/08/2,)
It remains to be seen what creative outgrowth is derived from possible future collaborations between East and West strains of the nation’s two most formidable institutions. JALC and SFJAZZ are charged with advancing the highest standards of American cultural production and will no doubt continue their traditions of excellence with verve and great expectation. As for Antonin Dvorak, his prophetic voice today still “rings from sea to shining sea.”
Congratulations Terrance Blanchard!
A new epoch in American Art and Culture emerges with Terrance Blanchard being named the new Artistic Director of SFJAZZ! New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), under direction of Wynton Marsalis, and the Bay area’s San Francisco Jazz Collective (SFJAZZ) are the epicenter of Jazz music globally.
Blanchard, a native New Orleanean, has been nominated for two Academy Awards for composing the scores for Spike Lee’s films BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020). He has won five Grammy Awards from fourteen nominations.
From 2000 to 2011, Blanchard served as Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. In 2011, he was named artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami, and in 2015, he became a visiting scholar in Jazz composition at the Berklee College of Music. In 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), named Blanchard to its Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies, where he remained until 2023.
The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged Blanchard’s opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones in its 2021–2022 season, the first opera by an African American composer in the organization’s history.[1][2]And this Spring 2023, Blanchard’s opera Champion was performed at the Met.
With this rapid ascension of Jazz well into the 21st century, America’s cultural production of new and reimagined Jazz compositions continues affirmation of Antonin Dvorak’s 20th-century observation. Dvorak firmly believed that America’s original cultural contribution to Western civilization lay fundamentally in the original music of Black and Indigenous Americans.
“Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) observed that Black music would be the foundation of a ‘great and noble’ school of American classical music. Dvorak lived in the United States from 1892 to 1895, recruited to help create a national music conservatory in New York. As he had done at home in Bohemia, he went in search of homegrown music. He quickly concluded that in America, homegrown meant music created by Black and Indigenous people.” (Source Washington Post 12/08/2,)
It remains to be seen what creative outgrowth is derived from possible future collaborations between East and West strains of the nation’s two most formidable institutions. JALC and SFJAZZ are charged with advancing the highest standards of American cultural production and will no doubt continue their traditions of excellence with verve and great expectation. As for Antonin Dvorak, his prophetic voice today still “rings from sea to shining sea.”
Congratulations Terrance Blanchard!