Terence Oliver Blanchard (born March 13, 1962) is an American trumpeter and composer. He started his career in 1982 as a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, then The Jazz Messengers. He has composed more than forty film scores and performed on more than fifty. A frequent collaborator with director Spike Lee, he has been nominated two Academy Awards for composing the scores for Lee's films BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020). He has won five Grammy Awards from fourteen nominations.
From 2000 to 2011, Blanchard served as artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. In 2011, he was named artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami. In the fall of 2015, he was named a visiting scholar in jazz composition at Berklee College of Music. In 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), named Blanchard their Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies, where he will remain until 2024.
The Metropolitan Opera announced it will stage Blanchard's opera Fire Shut up In My Bones, with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, in their 2021-2022 Season. As of 2019, this will be the first production by a black composer staged by the Metropolitan Opera in the organization's 136-year history.
Last Updated: June 9, 2021
