Sounding the Horn

Press "play" and gently free-fall into the brass man's aural embrace: A trumpet, skipping like an exuberant child, dances and prances around a playful bass line ... stark, tremulous chords slowly shift in musical half-steps, waves of harmony rolling into and over each other ... languid, rueful horn riffs drift lazily along on a floating cloud of melancholy.

Grammy-worthy images painted in sound.

"People were asking me if I was going to write something for Katrina, and I was at a loss for ideas," says Terence Blanchard, the 45-year-old, New Orleans-born jazz trumpet virtuoso responsible for those lush excerpts from three tracks on "A Tale of God's Will (Requiem for Katrina)," his critically lauded CD. "I was dealing with this immense silence I heard when I was in my mom's neighborhood. She lost her house and there was nothing there, no animals or insects or birds. A lot of us have been scarred, but when it came time to do the record, I wanted to explore the stamina of the human spirit."

His labors yielded a deeply personal work vying for a coveted statuette in twin jazz categories at next month's Grammy ceremony.

First, though, Blanchard lends musical muscle to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Sunday, in a tribute to a half-century of artistry.

Quiz jazz fans about famed festivals that further the art form and such names as Newport, Montreux and Monterey leap off their lips. The latter, gliding gracefully into middle age, is celebrating 50 years of rallying around the music. Traveling the touring circuit, the iconic Monterey Jazz Festival is giving a swinging shout-out to its own legend and longevity by distilling its vast history and roster of greats into one power-packed quintet dubbed the MJF Anniversary Band. Blanchard, the festival's 2007 artist-in-residence, joins musical director/pianist Benny Green, saxophonist James Moody, bassist Derrick Hodge and drummer Kendrick Scott at Artemus Ham Hall to jam the joint and do backup duty for vocalist Nnenna Freelon.

"This is the model festival, it sets the bar very high -- people still fight for tickets," Blanchard says of the annual festival, a three-day jazz jamboree in the cozy California community that kicked off in 1958 with the likes of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, funds jazz education programs throughout the country and has counted Clint Eastwood among its board members.

Blanchard is an effective emissary, given that his music has penetrated mass culture, even if the masses don't know it: Blanchard is the most prolific jazz composer of movie scores, with nearly 50 on his resume.

"It really started by accident when Spike (Lee) asked me to compose music for him and it grew from there," Blanchard says of the enormous career spike. The scores for Lee -- "Mo' Better Blues," "Inside Man," "Jungle Fever," "Malcolm X," "Clockers," "25th Hour" and "Summer of Sam" among them -- are augmented by other projects, including music for "Original Sin," "People I Know" and "Talk to Me."

Written for Lee's HBO Katrina documentary, "When the Leeves Broke," Blanchard's "A Tale of God's Will" CD -- selections from which will be performed Sunday -- bears the musical virtues People magazine said "spring from his sense of restraint. The joy is in the tease." It's apparent in every note he plays, and every one he doesn't play.

"I tried to restrain myself, because I didn't want the entire CD to sound angry," Blanchard says. "I needed to relax and allow people's stories to be told through me as an artist, and I tried to use space, which is a very powerful tool to make any statement because it lets people reflect on their own."

The reflections shimmer in the staccato trumpet that plays peekaboo around the Afro-fusion beats ... in the weeping strings weaving through mournful chord progressions ... in the low, locomotive rhythm prodding a bluesy riff for a rebuilding city.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0256.