MOUNT VERNON — Jazz trumpeter and film composer Terence Blanchard, whose music has graced movie soundtracks including Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” “Jungle Fever” and “Mo’ Better Blues,” will perform at 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 14, in King Chapel at Cornell College. Admission is $8 at the door. The concert is part of Cornell’s Music Mondays series.
Blanchard’s newest release, “Wandering Moon” on the Sony Classical label, is a break from his film theme work. The album features Blanchard performing his own compositions, joined by artists Branford Marsalis, Brice Winston, Aaron Fletcher, Edward Simon, Dave Holland and Eric Harland.
“Few can match Blanchard’s precision and flair in evoking emotion,” wrote Time magazine in 1994. “He has developed an expressive style reminiscent of the mid-1960s Miles Davis.”
Born in New Orleans, Blanchard started on the piano at age 5, encouraged by his musically inclined father. When a jazz band came to his school during third grade, he fell in love with the trumpet. He studied at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, then moved to New York and became a trumpeter with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
He began composing for films in 1987, when Spike Lee recruited him to perform on the soundtrack for “School Daze.” In addition to numerous Lee films, Blanchard has composed for other big and small screen projects such as “Eve’s Bayou” for Universal Pictures and “Gia” on HBO. Blanchard’s 1999 release, “Jazz in Film,” features movie themes including “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Duke Ellington’s “Anatomy of a Murder,” Bernard Herrmann’s “Taxi Driver,” Jerry Goldsmith’s “Chinatown,” André Previn’s “The Subterraneans” and Quincy Jones’ “The Pawnbroker.”
Cornell’s Music Mondays series closes its second season on April 3 with a performance by Tapestry, a Boston-based ensemble specializing in the performance of medieval and contemporary vocal music.