Composer
TERENCE BLANCHARD

MODERATED BY JAZZ TANGCAY (Variety)

Screening Link available upon Registration

YouTube Live Stream Q&A :
MONDAY, MAY 24, 6:30PM PT

It is 1931 in Los Angeles. While the rest of the country struggles through the Great Depression, this city is booming! Oil! Olympic Games! Talking Pictures! Evangelical Fervor! And a child kidnapping gone very, very wrong. Based on characters created by author Erle Stanley Gardner, the drama series Perry Mason stars Emmy® winner Matthew Rhys. The series follows the origins of American fiction’s most legendary criminal defense lawyer, Perry Mason. When the case of the decade breaks down his door, Mason’s relentless pursuit of the truth reveals a fractured city and just maybe, a pathway to redemption for himself. TV-MA | 60min

Terence Blancard, a two-time Oscar nominee and six-time Grammy-winner, has been a consistent artistic force for making powerful musical statements concerning painful American tragedies – past and present. From his expansive work composing the scores for almost 20 Spike Lee projects over three decades, ranging from the documentary When the Levees Broke to the latest Lee film, Da 5 Bloods, Blanchard has interwoven beautiful melodies that created strong backdrops to human stories. Blanchard received an Oscar nomination for his original score for Da 5 Bloods in 2021 which marked his second nomination. Blanchard previously received an Oscar nomination for his original score for Spike Lee’s 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 Metropolitan Opera will premiere Fire Shut Up in My Bones on September 27, 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. With his current quintet The E-Collective, featured on the score to BlacKkKlansman with a 96-piece orchestra, Blanchard delivered “a soaring, seething, luxuriant score,” The New York Times. In Vice Magazine, Blanchard elaborates, “In BlacKkKlansman it all became real to me. You feel the level of intolerance that exists for people who ignore other people’s pain. Musically, I can’t ignore that. I can’t add to that intolerance. Instead, I have to help people heal from it.”

Some of Blanchard’s other film and television credits include Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, 25th Hour, and Inside Man; Kasi Lemmons’ films, Eve’s Bayou and Harriet; Regina King’s One Night in Miami…; George Lucas’ Red Tails; and the critically acclaimed drama series Perry Mason starring Matthew Rhys with episodes directed by Tim Van Patten which premiered on HBO in June 2020.

*** IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ ***

FREE for current SCL members (click HERE to check membership status).

Attendees will be emailed a Screening Link upon Registration and a Q&A YouTube Live Stream link on Monday, May 24, 10 minutes before Q&A start.

Attendees can ask questions on YouTube chat, and the SCL Host will pass them on to the Moderator. The SCL Member Code of Conduct applies to online Q&As.

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