StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Terence Blanchard and the E-Collective

This week, let's take a look at some videos featuring trumpeter Terence Blanchard and his band, the E-Collective, who are coming to St. Louis to perform Sunday, May 20 at the Grandel Theatre.

Blanchard is, of course, no stranger to St. Louis, having performed here most recently in February of this year in a benefit for Metro Theater Company at the Grandel in conjunction with their staging of Bud, Not Buddy, a musical play for which he wrote the score.

Prior to that, in addition to making numerous appearances here with his own bands over the past decade-and-a-half at both Jazz at the Bistro and The Sheldon, the trumpeter/composer's first opera Champion was premiered here in 2013 at Opera Theatre St. Louis, and OTSL also will premiere his second opera Fire Up In My Bones in 2019.

This time around, however. Blanchard is here because he's touring in support of his most recent album, simply titled Live, which came out last month on Blue Note Records.

Recorded last year in St. Paul, Cleveland, and Dallas, the album's seven tracks continue Blanchard's musical examination of the issues of gun violence, police brutality, and racism that began with the E-Collective's Grammy-nominated 2015 album Breathless.

You can see and hear a performance of one of the songs from the new album, "Dear Jimi," in the first video up above, recorded in July 2016 at the Pescara Jazz Festival in Italy. Along with Blanchard, who's playing synthesizer on the track, the band includes Charles Altura (guitar), Taylor Eigsti (piano), David Ginyard Jr. (bass), and Gene Coye (drums).

After the jump, there's a version of "Soldiers," another track included on Live, followed by performances of "Confident Selflessness" and the title track from Breathless, all recorded in September 2015 at the studios of radio station KNKX in Tacoma, WA.

That's followed by a video of Blanchard and the E-Collective's appearance in 2015 on NPR's "Tiny Desk Concerts," and two video interviews with Blanchard - the first a "making of" promotional clip for Live, and the other a more wide-ranging conversation recorded in February of this year before a gig that Blanchard played at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, PA,

For more about Terence Blanchard and his latest recording, check out this short feature that aired in March 2018 on NPR, and Blanchard's interview from April 2018 with Billboard magazine.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...