Terence Blanchard. Photo by Cedric Angeles.
In Saturday’s (3/20) Boston Globe, A.Z. Madonna writes, “Trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard is well acquainted with prestigious stages, from the Metropolitan Opera to the Monterey Jazz Festival…. Blanchard has performed his original music a handful of times alongside both the Boston Pops and his own ensembles, at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood. But this time around, he’s playing with the BSO at the invitation of composer chair Carlos Simon, who arranged and curated this weekend’s tribute program to saxophonist John Coltrane. The program has already been performed with orchestras in Toronto and London, with different soloists … The program includes several of the saxophonist’s signature pieces arranged for orchestra … The work of several arrangers, including Simon himself, is represented on the bill. The Washington, D.C.-based composer created orchestral versions of both ‘In a Sentimental Mood,’ which Coltrane performed on his collaborative album with the tune’s composer, Duke Ellington; and the mournful ‘Alabama,’ composed in response to the 1963 bombing by white supremacists of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala…. As an artist, Blanchard said, ‘you’re always trying to have people reflect and think about current issues,’ and in the present moment, doing that is ‘paramount to the cause of being an artist.’ ”
