Two-time Oscar® nominee, six-time Grammy®-winner, and 2018 USA Fellow trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard has been a consistent artistic force making powerful musical statements concerning pivotal moments in American culture — past and present. From his expansive work composing the scores for Spike Lee films ranging from the documentary When the Levees Broke, about Blanchard’s hometown of New Orleans during the devastation from Hurricane Katrina to the epic Malcolm X; and the latest Lee film, Da 5 Bloods which was released by Netflix in June 2020, Blanchard has interwoven melodies that created strong backdrops to human stories. 

Blanchard received Oscar® nominations for his original scores for Spike Lee’s films BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020). He was also BAFTA nominated for his original music for the 2018 film. He won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition for writing “Blut Und Boden (Blood and Soil)” a track from BlacKkKlansman. 

More recently, Blanchard has composed his second opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on the memoir of celebrated writer and The New York Times columnist Charles Blow. The libretto was written by Kasi Lemmons and commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis where it premiered in June 2019. The Metropolitan Opera premiered a revived version of Fire Shut Up in My Bones in September 2021 to open their 2021-22 season in New York, making it the first opera composed by an African American composer to premiere at the Met. Blanchard’s first opera, Champion, also premiered to critical acclaim in 2013 at OTSL and starred Denyce Graves with a libretto from Pulitzer Prize Winner, Michael Cristofer.