Age: 64
male
Terence Oliver Blanchard (born March 13, 1962) is an American jazz trumpeter and composer. He has also written two operas and more than 80 film and television scores. Blanchard has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Original Score for BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods, both directed by Spike Lee, a frequent collaborator. Blanchard started his career in 1980, playing in the Lionel Hampton Orchestra while studying jazz at Rutgers University. In 1982, just before he turned 20, he dropped out of Rutgers to join The Jazz Messengers, launching a professional career now in its fifth decade. The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged Blanchard's opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones in its 2021–2022 season, the first opera by an African American composer in the organization's history. Blanchard is also a passionate educational mentor. 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, and in 2015, he became a visiting scholar in jazz composition at the Berklee College of Music. In 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) named Blanchard to its Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies, where he remained until 2023. In 2023, SFJAZZ announced the appointment of Blanchard as Executive Artistic Director. He leads the organization's artistic programming and guides its overall creative direction. Blanchard was selected as the 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters. The program is one of the most prestigious honours in jazz. Abbey Lincoln, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Sonny Rollins are among the 173 fellows recognized by the NEA as great figures of jazz. Description above from the Wikipedia article Terence Blanchard, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Motown is an American Record Company. The record company was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12, 1959, and was incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960, in Detroit, Michigan. The name, a portmanteau of motor and town, has also become a nickname for Detroit. Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music as an African American-owned record label that achieved significant crossover success. In the 1960s, Motown and its subsidiary labels (including Tamla Motown, the brand used outside the US) were the most succesful proponents of what came to be known as the Motown Sound, a style of soul music with a distinct pop influence. Those artists who signed to Motown were Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, Diana Ross and The Supremes, The Temptations, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5. During the 1960s, Motown achieved spectacular success for a small record company: 79 Records in the Top Ten of the Billboard Hot 100 record chart between 1960 and 1969. For many decades, Motown was the highest-earning African American Business in the United States.
