Enter the mind of trumpeter, composer, 2024 NEA Jazz Master, and SFJAZZ Executive Artistic Director Terence Blanchard. He speaks about his relationship with the piano, his philosophical distinction between composing and improvising, and how composition is a discipline that reveals its nature to the composer as well as the audience.

Blanchard has been a consistent artistic force for over 40 years. From his stint with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and his 20+ albums as a leader to writing scores for innumerable films and composing operas, the five-time GRAMMY-winner and two-time Oscar nominee is unique in the jazz world as an artist whose creative endeavors go far beyond genre.

A recipient of a 2018 USA Artist Fellowship and a 2023 Peabody Medal, Terence is also a passionate educational mentor, having held positions at the Berklee Institute of Music, The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, and as Chair of Jazz Studies at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, amongst many others.

In 2016, SFJAZZ presented his opera Champion: An Opera in Jazz, a project chronicling the life of boxer Emile Griffith, and his follow-up Fire Shut Up in My Bones was the first opera by a Black composer presented by New York’s Metropolitan Opera, premiering in 2021.

Blanchard has had a long relationship with SFJAZZ as performer and Resident Artistic Director.

As Executive Artistic Director, Blanchard is the artistic leader of the organization and is a critical voice in formulating and implementing programming across diverse disciplines and genres.