Terence Blanchard at The Carver Community Cultural Center

Terence Blanchard with the E-Collective and Turtle Island Quartet
The Carver Community Cultural Center / Jo Long Theatre
San Antonio, TX
November 4, 2023

San Antonio's Carver Community Cultural Center has long been a primary presenter of African American musical and educational programming in the city. Its first incarnation was as the Colored Community House, built in 1905 on land purchased by the NAACP. The building was set for demolition after desegregation in the 1970s but was saved by citizens standing in front of bulldozers. The likes of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie have lifted The Carver's roof with their glorious performances. On Saturday, November 4, 2023, it was the widely acclaimed trumpeter-composer Terence Blanchard's turn, and he delivered.

Blanchard took the stage with the E-Collective: bassist David Ginyard, drummer Oscar Seaton, Charles Altura on guitar, Taylor Eigsti at the piano, along with the Turtle Island Quartet. The concert centered on Absence, Blanchard's recording honoring saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter (Blue Note, 2021). They began with the title cut, written by Ginyard, followed by Shorter's "The Elders" and Blanchard's "I Dare You" (see YouTube, bottom of page). The musicians came ready to play. There was almost no sheet-music on the bandstand; they knew the terrain and needed no road map. Their sounds filled the hall from note one, holding the audience fast for the next ninety minutes.

Unsurprisingly, given Blanchard's large body of award-winning work as a film composer, much of the performance had a cinematic feel and flow. Interplay between string and jazz quartets was animating, but the spine-tingling drama happened when Blanchard's larger-than-life trumpet entered the spotlight, supported by his superbly synergistic rhythm section. Both in music and speech, he seems to relish relating tales, often personal stories that are part of a larger narrative. As an improviser, his virtuosity is not for its own sake, but in service of the story. There are no "filler notes," as he put it ("A Conversation with Trumpeter and Composer Terence Blanchard," UCTV, March 2023). His instrumental persona is commanding and direct, despite timbres that are amplified, wet, and thickened by frequent use of an octave divider and other effects.

The string quartet functioned as a miniature orchestra, leading transitions, providing moments of reflection, and contributing as improvisers. In a feature spot, they performed cellist Naseem Alatrash's haunting "Lifta." Alatrash, who is Palestinian, offered the song as a timely prayer for peace in Gaza. This was followed by violinist David Balakrishnan's "Island Prayers," which premiered in October 2023 as part of See Me As I Am, Lincoln Center's extraordinary yearlong celebration of Blanchard's work.

In introducing Turtle Island, Blanchard joked that they were on work furlough from Angola (the infamous Louisiana state penitentiary built on a former plantation and named after the African homeland of many of its enslaved occupants). People in Louisiana are familiar with the place, but it may not be as well-known elsewhere. Blanchard made passing reference to it twice during the performance. At twenty-eight square miles, Angola is the largest maximum-security prison in the US, traditionally housing felons with a life sentence and now—on the old death row—hosting juvenile offenders as well, largely African American boys. By most accounts, "Angola Plantation" is still a hellhole, a survival of slavery that hasn't improved much with age; hardly the typical home base for a string quartet. Perhaps he intended to point to that dissonance.

Blanchard has been highlighting social issues as part of his work for some time. He explains it this way on his website: "You get to a certain age when you ask, 'Who's going to stand up and speak out for us?' Then you look around and realize that the James Baldwins, Muhammad Alis and Dr. Kings are no longer here... and begin to understand that it falls on you." The program in San Antonio included spellbinding renditions of "Unchanged," "Kaos," and "Soldiers." All three are from Blanchard's Live album (Blue Note, 2018), which documents his concerts with the E-Collective in Cleveland, Dallas, and St. Paul, sites of three infamously tragic confrontations between police officers and African Americans. In the course of his life on the road as elsewhere, Blanchard underscores injustices, creating magnificent music around them so that those who have the ability to make change might be inspired to do so.