Blue Notes: Terence Blanchard

Four years have passed since trumpeter Terence Blanchard's last album as a leader: Choices (2009) featured some fine music marred by overdubbed monologues from philosopher-activist Dr Cornel West.

Blanchard has been busy, nonetheless, composing for stage and screen. Projects included soundtracks for the movies Bunraku (2010) and Red Tails (2012), and the music for an opera, Champion, with a libretto by playwright Michael Cristofer which had its world premiere yesterday at the Opera Theatre of St Louis.

And he has just released a new album, Magnetic.

Blanchard, who played in Hong Kong at the 2006 Arts Festival leading his own sextet, is one of a long line of great trumpeters to have come to the fore as members of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. The roll of honour includes Clifford Brown, Kenny Dorham, Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and Wynton Marsalis, whom he replaced in the band.

As a composer Blanchard is perhaps best known for his film soundtracks, owing in part to a longstanding association with director Spike Lee.

There is a cinematic quality to some of the jazz he records with his own bands. Some compositions, including several on the new album, sound as though they may have originally been intended to partner moving images, but the music is none the worse for that. Over the years jazz and the movies have borrowed plenty from each other.