Terence Blanchard's new projects

Nate Chinen talks to the trumpeter Terence Blanchard about his film soundtrack for Spike Lee's "When the Levee Broke" and about two current projects which also deal with his hometown New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina ( New York Times ). Tuesday his new album "A Tale of God's Will (Requiem for Katrina)" will be out, on which sequences from his film music are mixed with new compositions for his band and a 40 piece string orchestra. At the same time Blanchard is engaged in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance which recently has moved to New Orleans from the West Coast. While he himself studied music, Blanchard met the alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, both of whom replaced the Marsalis brothers in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. His career as a film composer began in 1990 with "Mo' Better Blues", but he never forgot his own projects. He owns an apartment in Los Angeles, travels a lot, but since Katrina he again focuses more on his roots in New Orleans.