Terence Blanchard Featuring the E-Collective and the Turtle Island Quartet

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Terence Blanchard:

A brass-wielding force of nature.

—Los Angeles Times

Blanchard told one scribe, ‘Music and art have the power to change hearts and souls.’ That sums up his social and spiritual mission.

—Dan Ouellette

Turtle Island Quartet:

This unique, jazzy four piece continues to entertain with its distinctive brand of tight, impressive bow-etry in motion.

—Billboard

A six-time Grammy winner and two-time Oscar nominee, composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard has been a consistent artistic force making powerful statements about American tragedies and highlighting sociocultural issues and racial injustices in his works.

For the collaboration Absence, a tribute to saxophonist Wayne Shorter, Blanchard worked with his internationally acclaimed band the E-Collective—which features young musical pioneers Charles Altura on guitar, Taylor Eigsti on piano and synthesizers, Oscar Seaton on drums, and David Ginyard on bass—and the boundary-pushing, Grammy-winning chamber group Turtle Island Quartet.

The repertoire includes arrangements of Shorter’s music along with an array of original works. Blanchard’s compositions expand on the reservoir of E-Collective tunes, utilizing a string quartet that is uniquely equipped for the full range of color and expression of the trumpeter’s sonic and stylistic sphere. The heart-stopping string quartet work “The Second Wave,” written by Turtle Island’s David Balakrishnan, is a major highlight of the evening.