Music Credits: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.
Terence Blanchard, Live at Monterey Jazz Festival, 2023. “The Water” from the album A Tale of God’s Will (a requiem for Hurricane Katrina). Composed and performed by Terence Blanchard. “I Dare You” from the album Absence Composed by Terence Blanchard, performed by the Turtle Island Quartet. “Peculiar Grace” from the opera, Fire Shut Up In my Bones. Music composed by Terence Blanchard, libretto by Kasi Lemmons, sung by Angel Blue, Metropolitan Opera, 09/27/2021.
Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works I’m Josephine Reed. This is part two of my 2023 conversation with NEA Jazz Master Terence Blanchard. In our last episode, we explored his early years in New Orleans, his time with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and his evolution as a composer and bandleader. Today, we continue the conversation by looking at the many ways Terence has expanded his artistry—with his groups, through opera, and his role as artistic director of SFJAZZ. We’ll talk about his album Absence dedicated to NEA Jazz Master Wayne Shorter, and how composing for opera pushed him into new creative territory. We’ll also explore his passion for music education and the ways he’s helped shape the next generation of jazz musicians. But first, we turn to one of the most defining moments of his life both personally and artistically—Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the United States killing over 1,800 people and devastating much of New Orleans. Katrina and its aftermath became the subject of Spike Lee’s four-part documentary, When the Levees Broke, which was scored by Terence. Terence was living in LA [Los Angeles] as well as New Orleans and brought his family, including his mother, to California before the hurricane hit. Their return to New Orleans became a part of the documentary.
Terence Blanchard: When we did When the Levees Broke, man, it was tough. It was tough for a lot of reasons. We were living uptown at the time, and the house that we had there, we didn't have water damage. We had broken windows because of the wind, and got all of that repaired. But what was crazy about that was when I worked on 4 Little Girls and the visuals of that and the storyline, when it would get too heavy for me, I would take a break and I would come down and hang out or go to the park, go bike riding or whatever. I couldn't do that when the levies broke, because I was really stepping right into what it was I was looking at in my studio. So that was a rough time. And then to go through the thing of taking my mom back to the house was probably one of the hardest things I had to do other than bury my father, because she was holding out hope that nothing had happened to the house, and I had already been to the house. I went the night before just on my own, and I saw the devastation, and I couldn't say anything to her. I had to let her experience it herself.
It was rough. That was hard. Spike didn't even come in. He stayed outside. It was hard for everybody that was there. We worked together, but we're family. You know what I mean? And they're seeing my house that I grew up in destroyed. But then when I started to see the documentary, I was totally amazed at what Spike put together. Initially, it was supposed to be a two-hour documentary, two hours, but there was so much information, we couldn't leave it there. We just had to expand it. But our budget stayed at a two-hour budget. So basically, we all worked for free at a certain point, but we were all committed to it. And I told Spike this, and it's probably one of the most comprehensive things I've ever seen done on this area, because there's so many different cultures and facets here. He had all of those things combined in this one piece. And that's the way that I tried to approach it in scoring it. But the most important thing was I was just thankful for him to do it.
Jo Reed: But then you also came out with the album A Tale of God's Will: A Requiem for Katrina building on some of the themes you used in When The Levees Broke.
Terence Blanchard: Yes.
Jo Reed: Tell me about the story that you felt like you wanted to tell with that album.
Terence Blanchard: Well, it was more that I couldn't get past the whole notion of what had happened to my city. Just seeing all that type of stuff in your hometown, it's something you never imagine, you never want to see again. But then it just frustrates you. And while I appreciated what Spike had done, I felt like I needed to make my own statement about it. And we started working on it, and the guys were creating their tunes and arrangements, and there was so much magic that was happening. It was crazy. I don't know who said it first, and I can't remember, but one of us started chanting, “this is a tale of God's will.” It just came out nowhere. We didn't have a title for the album at all. And once that started to happen, man, everything just started to fall into place for that album. And when we released that album, people were telling us how the music had affected them and how it helped them get through the grieving process.
Jo Reed: And A Tale of God's Will was the first Grammy you won as a leader.
Terence Blanchard: Yeah, it was interesting, the Tale of God. It was interesting because A Tale of God's Will was the first Grammy that I'd ever won in my life as a leader. And it was powerful. It just meant a lot because we didn't create the album for that. You know what I mean? But being recognized still meant a lot. So it was a powerful moment in time, for sure.
Jo Reed: And you addressed the impact of Katrina through your role as an educator….The Monk Institute is a multi-faceted organization dedicated to music education and you were instrumental in bringing the institute to New Orleans.
Terence Blanchard: Yeah. When I worked with The Monk Institute, I loved all of the work that we would do in the high schools. Granted, I love working with the students themselves. They were semi-pro soon to be pro musicians. But I was really excited about sending those guys out into the high schools and middle schools. So when we talked about bringing it to New Orleans, that meant a lot to me because I knew at that time that there were kids that were suffering, struggling here. When you go through something that's traumatic like that, I went through Hurricane Betsy as a kid. I remember stepping off of my porch being picked up. I was about four years old being picked up and put into a boat. And (we) couldn't find my dad for a couple of days, and we were staying in somebody's front room of a house sleeping on the floor. So come on, I'm four years old and I still have that's stuck in my head. So I knew that there were kids here that were in dire straits, right? And I also knew that music could probably be one of the things to help them. So that's why I wanted the Monk Institute to come to New Orleans. And sure enough, when we started sending our kids out into the high schools and the middle schools, they started to help a lot of kids here.
That's what my life turned around in terms of why I create music. When you see the power in it and how it can help people deal with these tough topics like this, you start to feel a responsibility to address these things, because all of my mentors are gone. You look around and you go, well, who else is here but us? So we need to address this stuff.
Jo Reed: But of course, you more than anyone are capable of doing more than one thing simultaneously. And the album Absence is your love letter to Wayne Shorter, it features your group E-Collective and The Turtle Island Quartet and I think it needs some flowers in this conversation.
Terence Blanchard: No, thank you for saying that. Man, I love Wayne Shorter so much that I had to do something to let him know that before he passed, and the thing about doing an album for Wayne, which is the way him and Herbie both are, they don't want you to just do their tunes. No. What do you see? How do you see it? How do you perceive it? What's your idea? You know what I mean? So we did a mixture of some of his tunes and some originals. And man, we got a chance to go and hang out with Wayne before we recorded. Now, I had been around Wayne a number of times. Obviously I've been on him for a long time. But some of the guys in the group, it was their first time being around him. And Wayne is the type of dude, he just gives you a life lesson of just a general conversation. And I'll never forget when we left the house, we were standing outside the house. We hadn't gone anywhere. And the guys were like, "Thank you, man. Thank you for this. Thank you, thank you."
Jo Reed: You talk about life lessons. Please, please convey the one where he said to you, “It takes courage to be happy.” Because I read that, and that was a life lesson for me. Like fourth hand.
Terence Blanchard: Right? Yeah. Well, I was playing at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. Jazz and Heritage Festival, and Wayne was there. And just in typical fashion, I don't even know how the subject came up, he starts to tell me about some violinist who never would win an audition for an orchestra, because she played real aggressive, and her style didn't mix with other string players. And she had gotten to the point of having so much rejection that she was at a low point in her life, almost at a point where she wanted to commit suicide. And her mother called her, and just like any mom could hear something was wrong with her child, and her child wouldn't say anything. And then the mom goes, “Well, it takes courage to be happy.” And when Wayne told me that story, man, I had been trying to, the best way I can explain it is that I was trying to live up to an image that wasn't real. It wasn't me. It was what I thought a jazz musician should be, right? And man, when he said that, it was like something was lifted off to my shoulders. And I went, "Oh, Right. It takes courage to be happy."
It brought me back to something that a great musician in New Orleans, Alvin Baptiste, said to me, he said, "Man, the easiest thing to do is to learn how to play like John Coltrane." He says, "Because everybody loves John Coltrane." He said, "The hardest thing to do is to be yourself. But that's what being an artist really is." So when Wayne told me that story, my mind went right back to that, and I went, right, okay. So now the question becomes, so then who am I really? Who am I really? I had been already moving down that road, but I was trying to fit it within an aesthetic. And when Wayne told me that the walls came tumbling down, everything became a possibility for me then.
Jo Reed: The composition you wrote for the album Absence is “I Dare You.” And that's an important title, a very significant one.
Terence Blanchard: Yeah, it's a very important title for a number of reasons, because the tune itself, it's a tune that I'd written to prove a point to my students about. You can make a tune out of two notes. (Terence scats)
Jo Reed: I kept thinking of Beethoven's Fifth.
Terence Blanchard: Okay, well, okay, okay. Right. Okay. So what's funny about that is that when I introduced it to the audience, we play a stretch of tunes, and I try to remind 'em of what they heard. And I said, "Do you remember that kind of funky Beethoven us thing that we start with?" I said, "That's one of my tunes." And what's crazy about that to me is because that the introduction was written the morning of the day, we recorded that introduction was written the morning of the day. We recorded the tune because I noticed we didn't have anything for, I said, "I woke up early one morning." I said, "We need something for this beginning of the tune." So I wrote that string introduction that morning and brought it in. And the title comes from something that Wayne said when he was asked by Tavis Smiley, what does jazz mean? And Wayne said, “Jazz means I dare you.” And it was another one of those life lessons you say, I dare you. And I'm like, "See, that's what I'm talking about. It takes courage to be happy. I dare you." You know what I mean? And it's one of those things where in the Buddhist philosophy is like to fight, to fight for your potential. To keep moving ahead. Wayne was a prime example of that. So it's kind of how I'm trying to live my life through his examples.
Jo Reed: What led to you composing opera? Were you fulfilling this suppressed longing?
Terence Blanchard: Oh, man. No way. No way. When it came to writing opera, that was not something that was even on the plate whatsoever. I always tell a joke, when Jim Robinson came and asked me, he said, we want you to write an opera. I kind of leaned across the table to smell his breath. I'm like, is this dude drunk? What's going on, man? You want me to write an opera? That's some of the funniest stuff I've ever heard. But I got to tell you though, I'm always up for a challenge. So I called Roger Dickerson again, "Roger, they want me to do this." Boom. And once I started, it was, man, it was such a journey because I didn't know what I was doing, but I kept saying to myself, just write what feels right. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, you still have another career.
Jo Reed: And Jim Robinson was artistic director of Opera Theatre of St Louis?
Terence Blanchard: Yes. And opera theater, St. Louis man, they were amazing. They really stepped me through the process. You work workshopping it, dealing with the voices, understanding when music should be turned in, understanding how to do a piano vocal score so we could rehearse. And then finally getting down to the final thing, man, it was a process, but the payoff is so incredible. I can't explain it to you. You sit in a room, you sit at a piano by yourself for two years crafting this story, and you kind of see images in your mind. But then all of a sudden, there are people who are singing these lines like sound familiar to you. And they're walking around the stage, and all of a sudden now they have costumes on and there's lighting. It blows my mind. So I've been telling people recently, "I'm looking forward to doing my third opera now," but probably when I'm in the middle of it, I'm going to be like, "Man, what the hell was I thinking?"
Jo Reed: Well, your first opera was Champion based on the life of Emil Griffith who was a boxer and he was gay. What attracted you to that story?
Terence Blanchard: I found out about Emil Griffith from my best friend, and he knows I'm a fight fan. And he had talked to me about Emile Griffith, and he told me about the book Nine, Ten and Out. So I think the thing that got me about Emile's story, I thought about the time that I won my first Grammy They called my name. I turned to my wife without thinking, give her a kiss and a hug, and I go up and receive my award. And I'm thinking, this guy became welterweight champion of the world and could never really celebrate that openly with anybody that he loved. Makes no sense to me. And what was beautiful about doing it with opera theater St. Louis, is that in order to promote the opera, we did a lot of civic stuff. I went to a lot of organizations, spoke to them, the gay and lesbian community, the sport in the sports world. We had panel discussions. We did a lot of stuff. And it brought everybody out in St. Louis to experience it. People from the health community that deal with dementia, they were there. And everybody was just thankful that there was something that treated these topics with dignity and allowed us to talk about.
So that, again, was a powerful thing for me. But the most important thing was I got hooked. I hate to say it, I hate to say it, Jim, but I got hooked. You know what I mean? I don't consider myself an opera composer, and they keep telling me, "Dude, you're an opera composer. Get over it." I am hooked on how it all comes together. My favorite part is when we get into the theater in rehearsal and you see it and you can kind of understand what's going on, but they don't have the wardrobe yet lighting. And when you get into the theater and the lights and the, oh my God, and it just starts to come, and then it really doesn't really pop until that performance, the premiere. There's something that happens to those guys when that curtain goes up, boom. They click into another world, man with all of a sudden everything just gets raised up a notch, and it's an amazing experience to have in your life.
Jo Reed: I have to think that all your experience in scoring films really helped you when it came for you to sit down with an opera.
Terence Blanchard: My experience in the film world helped me tremendously in the operatic world because I wasn't so concerned about writing for orchestra. I had that under my belt, and creating sonic colors for certain situations was fine. The problem was writing for voice. And the most problematic part is different from singing to singing. They can all be sopranos, but they're different. Sopranos all be baritones and all be different. So that part was the part that took some time to learn. But when you learn that for a specific singer, oh man, it turns everything around. Just knowing, knowing the abilities of the singers to be able to do those things, that's when the storytelling process really becomes a big deal. I'm a big Puccini fan, and the thing that I love about Puccini is that I love how the melody line develops with the story. They're intertwined, and that's what I've been trying to do. I also try to make the musical lines feel natural. So I would spend a lot of time, I would spend a lot of time reading the libretto out loud, and when I would read the libretto out loud, I would hear the rhythms and what it was that I was reading, and I would write that under the libretto. One of the other things that I had to learn about the human voice is that being a trumpet player, to hit those high notes, we have to hit those on demand. Right? Well, with singers, they can do that, but a lot of times they want to run up to the note. So you have to take that into consideration when you're writing, especially if you want it to be big at a certain point of the storyline. All those things play a factor in how you develop your melody lines.
Jo Reed: Well, Champion was very well received, and then comes opera number two. Fire Shut Up in My Bones based on the memoir by Charles Blow. So what is the origin story for that particular opera?
Terence Blanchard: My wife knew of the book Fire Shut Up in My Bones and asked me to read it. I was floored by a few things in the book. First I, I'm a big fan of Charles Blow, loved his writing, loved him as a commentator. Still think he's probably one of the smartest people out there. But then you read the book and you go, man, he's from Gibbon, Louisiana. Oh man. And then you find out that he was molested as a kid, and you go, wow, that was unfortunate. But then you look at his life and you go, but that dude came through that in a way that's so impressive. We have to do this story.
Jo Reed: Fire In My Bones opened in 2019 at the Opera Theater of St. Louis, and then you get a phone call from the Metropolitan Opera.
Terence Blanchard: Yeah, I get a phone call from a friend of mine named Peter Gelb, and he goes, “Hey man, we want to do your opera at the Met”. And I went, "Excuse me." You have to remember, I never really saddled up for this musical journey in my life. So while this is all taken off this, it's kind of unreal for me in a sense. Then all of a sudden now, the production has gone from being this one little thing to being this huge production at The Met. I remember walking into the rehearsal for the first day, and it was about 50 singers in the room, and I went, "Whoa." And I'm the only dude in there that couldn't sing. You know what I mean? It was like, oh, man. But the beautiful thing about it was everybody was on the same page as to the purpose, the importance of it. We had a round table discussion the first day of rehearsal, and there was a lot of tears, a lot of tears, people saying things like, this is the first role they've ever done that they can relate to. One of the young kids said it gave him hope because he was bullied at school because he wanted to be an opera singer, but he felt safe in our community. He was around so many people like him. I knew this, but it didn't really click until I had a conversation with the late Arthur Woodley, who was a great baritone, and we were talking about how a lot of African American singers grew up in a church or sang R&B or jazz, and they were told to turn all of that off to sing opera. And then it hit me that day of that first day at a rehearsal where we had the round table. I'm like, wait a minute. This is a current story. This is an American story. So I told the singers, I said, listen, whatever your background is, bring all of that to this man in Angel Blue. She did it on this aria “Peculiar Grace”. She asked me, are you okay with me doing some things? I'm like, sure. Because she grew up in a church singing a church. Lemme tell you something. When she sang, I think in rehearsal, everybody was in tears. It was powerful. I think what she sang was beautiful. Don't get me wrong. But I think the reason why we were all in tears was because it was like we've been avoiding this for how long? But it made total sense, and it was who she was as a person who has a deep faith, and man that turned everything around, turned everything around for everybody
Jo Reed: Fire Shut Up in My Bones opened the 2021–22 season at the Metropolitan Opera—the first opera staged there after the long Covid closure and it was first opera by a Black composer to be performed by the Met, ever. Which shocked the hell out of everybody so for you, it had to have been on one hand "Oh my God, my opera is at the Met and like, oh my God, are you kidding me?"
Terence Blanchard: Oh, definitely. That was definitely it. I was like, I was at the Met. It was just incredible. And then I'm like, I forgot the journalist who called me, he said, "How do you feel being the first African-American to have an opera at the Met?" I'm like, "What?" I didn't believe him. I'm like, go back and check that. That can't be true. Then not only was it true, but then I'm doing an interview on television and they bring me a ledger of operas that were rejected and William Grant Still's name is in there three times. Three times. And I had just heard one of those operas the summer before in St. Louis and thought it was hip and amazing. Didn't know what it was. I'm like, well, man, what is this? And they said, oh, that's William Grant Still's Highway 1. I went, man, that's kind of cool. I love that. So the thing that was so crazy about that period in my life, I kept telling people, man, okay, I'm the first African American to have an opera at the Met, but I'm not the first qualified African American to have an opera at the Met. Let's just be real about it. They were many other guys who were well qualified to have that moniker. So while I'm proud of it, but it comes with a mixed bag of emotions. Opera is the highest form of musical theater you could ever experience. That's the way I look at it, and I think with all of the talent out there, man, the possibilities are endless to create stories and tell stories that could be really intriguing to a fan base.
Jo Reed: What was opening night like at the Met? What was the feeling like in that house, on the stage?
Terence Blanchard: I was emotionally just blown away at the level of support that was shown to us. People came out dressed to the nines. It was incredible. And I had never been that nervous before in my life, because this is the Met. This thing could really bomb. But when those guys started to sing, I felt like I was in good hands, if that makes sense. I knew that they were stepping up to the plate. They understood what was at stake. Right. And like I said, everything went up a notch. Everything went up a notch. All the performances to such a degree where I felt weird coming out to take a bow at the end of it. You know what I mean? I just put some notes on the page, those people that went out there and performed and did it. But to see the response from the crowd, There were so many people who had never been to the Met before, never been to opera before, who came. They were excited about it. It was probably one of the most diverse audiences they've ever seen at the Met. And one of the things that we learned is that those first timers bought tickets to other shows.
Jo Reed: You are passionate about education.
Terence Blanchard: Yes.
Jo Reed: You have a whole career as an educator. Talk about why this is central to your artistic life.
Terence Blanchard: I am the beneficiary of great teachers and great programs as well. New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, all of the summer programs that I went to at Loyola University. Without those things, I don't know where I would be. And I see now, excuse me, I see now how important they are because we don't have a situation where guys are learning on the streets. Some people are, but guys are coming to these bands well prepared because of these systems. The guys in my jazz band with Kendrick Scott and some of those guys, they all went to Arch High School. Those arch high schools really helped shape their careers and gave them strong musical foundations, which allowed them to go out and grow and prosper. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and there was talk of taking music out of the schools, I lost it. I'm like, who would ever think of such a thing? I remember they did a study and they found that kids
who were involved in music did better in math and science, just in general. So just from a productive point of view, the arts really help us develop another side of our brain. And I'd like to think that it helps us to develop the compassionate side of us–that along with these experiences as musicians, allow us to create music to help people heal. But as patrons, it allows you to get from, like Art Blakely used to say, the doldrums of everyday life.—
It allows you to enter into a world where you could put aside things that are bothering you, things that are troubling you just for a moment, which could help rejuvenate your soul to get back to doing the work that you need to do. So I think it's a win-win for everybody involved, because music education is not just about creating musicians, but it's about creating a community that really appreciates the arts, I think. And I've seen what it's done for me. I'm here to tell you arts education is vital. It's vital. People don't really get it sometimes because they keep looking at the big picture. They're not understanding that this is not necessarily about creating the next Wynton Marsalis. No, it's not about that. If we do that, fine, that'd be great. But it's about creating the next productive person who understands what art is and what life is about, much bigger than what they see on the block. We want to have a world mentality. And that's what having these broader experiences for young kids does. Did it for me. Did it for everybody that I grew up with.
Jo Reed: I'm wondering when you're teaching students who are at the college level who are really thinking about a career in music, how do you help them develop their own style?
Terence Blanchard: Right. Well, when I'm working with kids who really want to become professional musicians, I make 'em all compose–all of them. But here's the thing. I teach them composition the way Roger taught me. So it's not necessarily about the idea, but it's how we develop the idea. So when I give 'em all of these rules about how to take their idea and runthrough all of these various permutations, they see all of these possibilities. The cool thing is, is that none of them sound the same because I'm not giving them the idea. They're taking their own ideas, and I'm showing them how to take that idea no matter how small, and blow it up into something big. An example I always use is (scats the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth). Four notes and it became a huge symphony.
Jo Reed: And you are now the artistic director at SFJazz. What attracted you to that role?
Terence Blanchard: Well, the job at SF Jazz for me, was really attractive because it's San Francisco, first of all. And when you think about music and art in San Francisco, man, there's a lot of cutting edge stuff it that's come from that area. It's been an incubator. You know what I mean? For art, for creative things, for daring things. It's getting, the tech world is kind of taking it over now in terms of the impression of what's there. But no, man, it's always been this haven for the arch for me. And Randall Kline, who was the guy who created SF Jazz, I've known him for a number of years, man, for a long time. When I first met him, he was a concert promoter. And when I saw what he built with SFJ is, I thought it was brilliant, brilliant. Had no idea I'd be working there—running a joint. But now that I'm there, I'm excited about what it is we can do. Because I wanted to be a destination spot. I want people from all over the world to come to San Francisco and check out SFJazz. We are already well entrenched in the community, and there's more things that we could do in terms of outreach to students that I'm working on. We want to go more into the schools and some communities and have a bigger footprint in those areas. But along with that, I want to offer opportunities for musicians that are kind of caught in the middle of things. You got to understand that it's a different world from when I got into the music industry. When I got in, you got signed to the label, they promoted you on radio, you were hearing you all over the place, and you could tour. That's gone. It's gone. So we have to figure out how to help some of these musicians who are not major stars, but who are not beginners. They're kind of caught in the middle a little bit. And so some of us realize we have to take a chance on them to build a relationship with audiences, and that'll happen over time. That's the reason why It's a nonprofit organization. We don't have to turn a profit, even though we do, we do extremely well. But at the same time, I am really excited about all of that. There's some technological things we're going to do. We have immersive video there. I'm excited about how we're going to incorporate that into live shows. I actually want to curate a series of matching video artists with musicians and have them collaborate on things. There's so many things coming down the pipe with SFJazz. So when you talk about why I'm there, man, it's because the sky's the limit with that organization. And I was telling some people, I said, man, I really feel like I've been given the keys to a Ferrari with SFJazz, because it's already been doing a lot of great work. I'm just coming in there and just kind of putting my take on things and trying to expand it in other areas.
Jo Reed: And you have been named an NEA Jazz Master. What does that mean for you, Terence?
Terence Blanchard: Well, first of all, I was not expecting that at all—the NEA Jazz Master thing because I had seen so many people receive it. When it finally dawned on me and I realized that it was real, it took me a second. It's a huge honor. It's a huge honor to be in a class with all of my heroes. It's something I didn't think of that it just never crossed my mind. And even now just talking about it, now's like the realization of it. It's overwhelming to a degree, because I remember when it started, and I remember saying to myself, finally, that's kind of cool that these guys are being recognized like this in such a way because they've been contributing so much to the world of music. And now to be in that lineup, man, ask me when it's all after the thing is done. It is kind of like going to the Met for the first time. It's like I can't really put into words what it feels like because I'm still processing the entire thing. But to suffice it to say, it's a huge, huge overwhelming honor to be amongst some of the greatest of our time.
Jo Reed: And an honor so well deserved. Terence, truly.
Terence Blanchard: Thank you.
Jo Reed: Thank you. Thank you for everything you do.
Terence Blanchard: No, thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I do. I do. And NEA Jazz Master. Wow.
Jo Reed: That was part two of my conversation with 2024 NEA Jazz Master Terence Blanchard. We spoke at the end of 2023. This is my last episode of Art Works. I am off to my retirement after 696 shows…and each one has been sheer pleasure. Art Works has been possible all these years because of the support from my colleagues at the Arts Endowment, most particularly those in the Office of Public Affairs, both past and present. So here’s to Adam Kampe, Jess Sarmiento, Jamie Bennett, Carlos Arrien, Rebecca Sutton, Kelli Rogowski, Liz Auclair, David Low, Sally Gifford, Paulette Beete, Carolyn Coons, Victoria Hutter, Sonia Tower, Aunye Boone, Cliff Archuletta, Allison Hill, and especially Don Ball. My heartfelt gratitude. For the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed—thank you for listening.
