2024 Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival: Power Power and Artistry: A Conversation with Jazz Legend Terence Blanchard
Event Information
-
Dates: May 21, 2024 11:30 AM
-
Who: Terence Blanchard, Musician Jeff Johnson, Moderator
-
Venue: The City Club of Cleveland Cleveland, OH
Event Dates and Tickets
Tuesday, May 21, 2024 11:30AM
Share this event
About the Event
Few musicians tower like Terence Blanchard. The eight-time Grammy winner has been recording for more than four decades, and though his early work recalls the legacy of midcentury greats, for years now, Blanchard has been remaking and reshaping the genre, turning it into a force to give voice to social change. A trumpeter, pianist, composer, Blanchard has pushed the genre and his own artistry beyond jazz to opera and film scores.
Blanchard began playing in his teenage years with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. By the 1980s, he was playing with Art Blakley's Jazz Messengers. In the 90s, he began performing solo and working with filmmaker Spike Lee, a collaboration that would include films from Do the Right Thing to BlacKKKlansman. During the same period of time, he began to work in opera, turning Charles Blow's 2014 memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones into an opera for the Metropolitan Opera's 2021-2022 season, marking the first time a project from an African-American composer was presented from the Met's world-renowned stage.
Blanchard is in Cleveland for an appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra's Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival, where he will perform the music of Wayne Shorter. Before he does, he'll join moderator Jeff Johnson on our stage for a conversation about power and his own artistry and what it means to use music to address social challenges.
Tickets are available for purchase online until Friday, May 17th at noon. For more information on registration, please contact Stacy Holmes at [email protected].
About the Festival
Since its premiere in 1791, Mozart’s The Magic Flute has charmed audiences with its enchanting story and entrancing score. But beneath its magic bells, ominous serpents, vengeful queens, and mystical quests lies a carefully attuned study of power.
Reason, embodied by Enlightenment ideals that the Freemasons embraced, duals with superstition; science and wisdom vie with ignorance; and light combats darkness. Rising above them all, the power of love — for a companion, a child, a community, or humankind — has the unique ability to transcend these divides.
The second Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival delves into these competing forces — as they play out in Mozart’s beloved opera, as well as across nature, society, and within the state of humanity itself. Anchored by a new staged production of The Magic Flute featuring The Cleveland Orchestra, Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, and a cast of renowned singers, the festival will include a fascinating array of performances, conversations, and exhibitions. Over the course of two extended weekends from May 15 to May 26, 2024, community partners from across the Greater Cleveland area and luminaries from around the globe will come together to examine and debate many of the power structures embedded in our world today.