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Terence Blanchard
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Terence Blanchard blows up a storm
By Jack Massarik, Evening Standard 16.07.08
Stimulating: Terence Blanchard works well with his band
But for Wynton Marsalis, a trumpet star of the same generation, same New Orleans birthplace, similar Louisiana charm and even a similar instrument, one of those Art-Deco models with matching inset mouthpiece, Terence Blanchard would have it made.
The movies of Spike Lee assisted his breakthrough. Several of them featured his themes, although you'd have had to wait until last night's encore to hear one, a delightful version of Mo' Better Blues. The preceding numbers all came from Blanchard's current album, A Tale of God's Will, a beautiful requiem for his Katrina-devastated hometown.
Each movement was inspired by traumatic events, the first an elderly man's four-day fight for survival on a rooftop while helicopters came and went, the second a horrific vista of unburied corpses. To do such themes justice requires unusual sensitivity and creativity at such deliberate tempos but Blanchard's latest group is outstanding. Beside faithful tenorist Brice Winston - "he's from Tucson, Arizona, which only has one jazz musician and he's it" - was Jamire Williams, a brilliant drummer last heard here with Kenny Garrett, and two newcomers, doublebassist Derrick Hodge and Cuban pianist Fabian Almazan.
All impressed in various partnerships, Hodge switching briefly to five-string bass-guitar and Williams sustaining incredibly quiet press-rolls as Blanchard quoted from Amazing Grace and the bugler's Last Post. The tension-release was stimulating when the group finally broke into swing. This band doesn't slash and burn but it makes powerful points and intercommunicates on a far deeper plane than the average.
• Ends tonight (020 7439 0747).
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