JAZZ.FM91 - Canada's Premier Jazz Station

Terence Blanchard onstage at Humber; the saxophonist is Humber student Eli Bennett

When Brad Barker called me and asked if I'd be able to introduce Terence Blanchard at Humber College on behalf of JAZZ.FM91, my immediate response was "ABSOLUTELY!" I've been following Blanchard's music and his remarkable and inspiring career ever since I was first introduced to his playing on the station around the time we first launched our 24/7 all-jazz format. With the entire radio station devoted to jazz it became possible to discover the many gems in our large library. Terence Blanchard emerged as one of the big guns very quickly.

Terry McElligott

There are great players and then there are great players who give back. Terence is one of them. He's made dozens of albums since the early 1980s, and has played for Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, Wynton Marsalis; he's won no less than five Grammy awards. You've heard his playing in the scores of some forty movies. In the middle of all that he has always made time to work with students. He is the Artistic Director of New Orleans' Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz and is responsible for having brought it from Los Angeles to New Orleans.

On March 10th, 2010 he played with the top students of Toronto's Humber College music program. The evening was in two parts. The first was The Humber Terence Blanchard project, Terence playing with a very, very talented student quintet. They played several tunes including Jimmy van Heusen's "I Thought About You", Wayne Shorter's "Footprints", and one by Terence himself, "Wandering Wonder", which he'd written for his fellow musicians in New Orleans. The second half of the evening featured a big band of more than two dozen student players including a string section, conducted by Humber Music program director and JAZZ.FM91 board member Denny Christianson. Each tune, from composers ranging from Alex North to Quincy Jones to Duke Ellington and beyond, reflected Terence's interest in film scoring. They got right into music from "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Anatomy of a Murder", Taxi Driver" and others. Truly, it was one of those evenings you wish you could have put in a bottle and kept.

Terence had many great things to say about the cailbre of the Humber students and the city's jazz scene. He also pointed out that in a world where jazz radio stations are closing regularly; the fact that this city has a station with more than 300,000 listeners is amazing to him.

Can't wait until he comes back, and my guess is that neither can that night's packed house, nor the student players.

Terry is the host of Midday Jazz, heard 10AM to 2PM, Monday through Friday on JAZZ.FM91.