artist info

Since top-tier jazz and multiple Grammy-winning trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard embarked on his solo recording career with his eponymous Columbia Records album in 1991, the New Orleans born and based artist has traveled many paths musically, including delivering adventurous and provocative acoustic jazz outings of original material, composing over 50 soundtracks and even debuting and opera. But for his latest Blue Note Records album, Breathless, Blanchard powerfully and playfully journeys into another jazz realm with his new quintet, The E-Collective—an exciting zone of grooved fusion teeming with funk, R&B and blues colors.

Produced by the trumpeter and his manager Robin Burgess and executive produced by Blue Note president Don Was, the adventurous 13-tune recording zeroes in on several Blanchard originals, an epic-length piece by Almazan and a scattering of covers, sung by soothing and soulful vocalist P.J. Morton (a member of the band Maroon 5). It’s a first foray into straight-up grooveland for Blanchard, and he’s thrilled with the dance-steeped party he and his quintet (and guests) have cooked up. “Breathless is the album I’ve been wanting to do for quite awhile,” he says. “Growing up I was listening to the Head Hunters and Weather Report, which had a strong effect on me. I always listened to groove-based music—Jimi Hendrix, Parliament Funkadelic and then later listening to Prince and D’Angelo and later what [jazz trumpeter] Russell Gunn was doing. But up to this point, I had never explored it.” It’s a subject that Blanchard and his friends have been talking about for at least the last seven years. “But I could never find the time to do it,” Blanchard says. “I remember playing some grooved-based stuff with Oscar for Spike’s [2006] film Inside Man, and I said that we needed to put together a band. All this time later, here we are. I figured, if not now, I’ll probably never do it.”

As for the breadth of Breathless, Blanchard is pleased to have followed through with a project that’s dear to his heart and deep in his history. As for his jazz diehard fans who may frown at the deep-grooved fusion, he’s not worried. “I always think of Miles Davis,” he says. “No matter what he played, he was always Miles. He changed, but most of all he was having fun. That’s the way I look at it. Whatever comes, so be it. But for this recording, there was just one must. The groove. Everything else is up for grabs.