Terence Blanchard featuring the E-Collective & the Turtle Island String Quartet

“[Terence Blanchard is] an artist beyond category.” —Jazziz

While Terence Blanchard is a leading candidate as the 21st Century’s definitive renaissance musician, the New Orleans trumpeter has never neglected his jazz roots. Forged in the searing cauldron of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, he has maintained one of jazz’s most prodigious bands at the same time he’s become a ubiquitous presence as a composer. Leaping across stylistic conventions and busting through long-barred doors while soaring to the top of each musical field he enters, Blanchard earned rapturous reviews in 2021 when his opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, became the first ever Met production composed by a Black artist. He’s also an A-list Hollywood composer with more than three dozen film scores to his credit, including 2022’s hit drama The Woman King. Given the diversity of his musical pursuits, it’s astonishing that the five-time Grammy Award winner continues to play an essential role in jazz. He returns to the SJF with his E-Collective and Turtle Island Quartet, the Bay Area jazz string ensemble led by violinist David Balakrishnan. He and Balakrishnan first connected in early 2020 and the budding relationship quickly manifested on the E-Collective’s 2021 Blue Note album, Absence, an homage to jazz legend Wayne Shorter. Amidst his various commissions and composing gigs, Blanchard has toured widely with the E-Collective and Turtle Island over the past year, allowing the ensembles to hone the collaboration. Always eager to share the spotlight, he created the E-Collective as a vehicle to work with drummer Oscar Seaton, an ace studio player who’s equally effective in jazz, R&B, pop, and gospel settings. The band’s repertoire includes tunes and arrangements by bassist David Ginyard, Jr. and Berkeley-raised guitarist Charles Altura. Holding down the pivotal piano chair is festival mainstay Taylor Eigsti, a renaissance artist himself whose 2021 album Tree Falls (featuring E-Collective mate Ginyard) won a Grammy for best contemporary instrumental album.