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When I heard that Terence Blanchard named his latest tour “Caravan,” I figured it had to do with the Juan Tizol-Duke Ellington tune that Blanchard must have played again and again as a young trumpeter in drummer Art Blakey’s band.<\/p>\nWhen I heard that Terence Blanchard named his latest tour “Caravan,” I figured it had to do with the Juan Tizol-Duke Ellington tune that Blanchard must have played again and again as a young trumpeter in drummer Art Blakey’s band.<\/p>\n
Nope. It was meant more to suggest\u00a0“a group of like-minded people moving around the country with a message,” Blanchard told me.<\/p>\n
As I worked on a long piece for The Daily Beast about Blanchard\u2014on connections between his band\u2019s current tour and the aftermath of senseless violence, and on his ambitions as both musician and concerned citizen\u2014I kept having to update the story to reflect breaking news: Blanchard gets nominated for a Best-Score Oscar; another black man gets shot by another\u00a0white\u00a0cop; Trump tweeted <\/i>what?; the Met Opera announces Blanchard\u2019s opera as its first presentation composed by an African American\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
Here<\/a>\u2019s what I came up with, thankfully not behind any pay wall, under the headline “Can A Trumpet Silence a Gun?”<\/p>\n My piece focuses in part on the premiere of\u00a0Blanchard\u2019s \u201cCaravan: A Revolution on the Road\u201d at the Soluna Festival in Dallas\u2014a performance that was meant as both a continuation of his musical response to troubling issues and a fresh attempt to blend visual art and dance into his performance, through collaborations with artist Andrew Scott and choreographer Rennie Harris\u2019s Pure American Street Dance Theater Company.<\/p>\n