Terence Blanchard (1962- ) is another blossoming musician who was born in New Orleans. He fooled about on piano early on but had an epiphany when he was eight: A jazz band cam to his elementary school and he zeroed in on trumpeter Alvin Alcorn. Nlanchard's father, a voice teacher, was deply into music and Terence had no problem shifting his focus to the trumpet, an inclination that was furthered when, in the sixth grade, he met a new friend named Wynton Marsalis. Both students attended the New Orleans Centre for the Creative Arts where Blanchard developed his molasses-smooth tone and began to expand his jazz underpinning with a fascination for other forms of music.
Blanchard headed to New York City after graduating from NOCCA and hooked up with a fellow New Orleanian, saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Blanchard and Harrison then teamed up to release some particularly fine CDs ... before Blanchard decided to form his own sextet and experiment with scoring film and television. During the several years worked in that medium, he wrote music for several Spike Lee movies and won an Emmy award ... But Blanchard would be quick to tell you that he's first a jazz musician. (Rick Koster. Louisiana Music p. 47)