You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - First Take Friday: Terence Blanchard

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

Our long-running one-time series First Take Wednesday has moved to Friday! Today, Peter and Adam listen to Terence Blanchard's touching tribute to Wayne Shorter.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe: link.youllhearit.com/speakpipeSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey. You know what the most You'll Hear at podcast thing ever is? What? It's to start a feature on a Wednesday one week and then decide the next week, let's move it to Friday. That's right, because why do we have to be restricted by seven days? We could be 10 days. We could be 11 days.

We got options. Yeah, we can just change all the time whenever we want. That's right. Yeah. Bam. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast.

Music advice, inspiration, and dope musical discoveries per chance. Coming at you. A new tagline. That's also something you can count on from this podcast. Peter's going to change the tagline virtually every podcast. Well, I'm just trying to. It's an addition. It's an amendment.

Guys got ants at his pants. You can't sit still, folks. I got ants in my pants and I got to dance. That was fun the last episode the day before yesterday. Did you hear that one? The 30 minute just listening session. Man, you still got a smile on your face after 48 hours. Can the podcast just be us in a room with a record player listening to music?

That would be so much fun. Yeah, that was the last one. Okay, great. Yeah, it was good though. Stay tuned, listeners. Maybe have more of that coming up. So today we're doing something. thing, as you just alluded to in the intro, I believe, that we inaugurated.

Yeah. Last week, last week was our inaugural first take Wednesday. That's right. And this week we're deciding to shift it to Friday because we think it might sound better, first take Friday. I'm going to fix that for you right now. That's right. We think it might be a little bit better.

Thank you, Harry. We think it might be better on Friday than Wednesday. Why? Because of alliteration. That's literally the only reason. But isn't that amazing? But it's an important thing to think about for music, too, because sometimes you play something, you change one little thing,

like when you're improvising or composing or arranger. You know how that is you're like, wow, you ship one little thing, first take Wednesday. That's not bad. Not bad at all. First take Friday. That's good.

That's very good. Look, that's proud of, I turned a frown into a smile. More music Monday could be happening. Here we go. So today's first take is this is an album, I've been wanting to listen to. Yeah.

Mostly First Take Fridays are going to be albums that we have on our, on deck for our own enjoyment. But because this is just the same, second week we should probably explain to folks what this is oh yeah yeah and that is we're listening to this this is the first track yep of a new or at least newish album and you know how new to us album new to us album so this could be anything in the last 80 years actually no but i mean generally these gonna be there's so much great stuff coming out this came out of a discussion that we were having a couple

of weeks ago about wanting eat both of us uh wanting to you know discover and listen to more new stuff. There's so much great old stuff, kind of medium old stuff, you know, whatever. And sometimes it seems like things are flying by. But we both, I think, are big believers in really, you know, focused listening. And so you need time to do that. And I love kind of looking forward to, especially an artist that I know and love. And maybe we've heard something about the concept in this case, Terrence Blanchard and his E Collective. So it's a very specific setting that, you know, we've heard live as well. Great band. Great band. But it's kind of like, you know, you're going to a restaurant and they have an all new menu and you've been there and you know it's going to be good but you're looking forward

like the anticipation of experiencing it so this is going to be a chance for us to listen to it for the first time no rehearsal unlike our normal episodes yeah just our peer reaction here to his new album absence the first track is absence and now is that absence or absent no absence no don't get too excited you're not going to hallucinate well you might the music is good enough i thought it was ab because you know i was thinking terence blancher of course in new orleans yeah native Sazirac the drink. Can we get a shit? Oh, yeah, Saziric.

Yeah. Now, can we give a shout out to Terrence? Fire Shut Up on My Bones premiered at the Met just this month. Yes. And that's a huge deal. Huge, huge deal. Incredible. We know that opera well because we were both a part of the premiere here in San Francisco.

You were on the premiere. Oh, you were at a rehearsal. Well, I stopped into a rehearsal to chop my way through some things. Yeah, I got to play the original run here in St. Louis. It's amazing show, beautiful music. Yeah. And Terrence is, of course, a legend. So this new album, though, is,

very interesting. It's a blue note album, and here I'll read the tag here. The acclaimed trumpeter and composer returns with an album of music written and inspired by jazz legend Wayne Shorter. Featuring Blanchard's band E. Collective with pianist, Fabian, Almasan, guitarist, Charles Latura, bassist David Gignard and drummer, Oscar Seton, and get this, Peter, the Turtle Island string quartet. Yes, I love them. In addition to shorter classics, including Fall, and Diana, the album presents a new band member original, or sorry, presents new band member originals dedicated to Shorter. So that's very, very cool. So all inspired by Wayne Shorter, one of the greatest jazz musicians, musicians of the 20 and

21st century. Shall we listen and give our thoughts here? Yep. Fabian, too, man. Have you seen that guy live? Yeah, absolutely. He's very, very good. Okay, here we go.

It's a pretty good way to start your album. That is incredible. That is a, I'm so eager to hear where this album unfolds because it's very, very, it's very epic. It's a very epic place to start. You know, it's almost like the middle of the record.

It could, this could be, if it was something else, but this sort of is going to set up the form, I think, in a very interesting way. Terence Planchard is such a great example. I was thinking as we were listening to that,

of how to stay relevant without it being corny or grasping for relevancy. You know what I mean? It's all obviously him and his interest and his curiosity, like this unending, seemingly unending curiosity

throughout his career to evolve and it's what you love about any great artists you know you think of Miles or Herbie or someone like or Wayne actually would be the relevant

example here and I think that what's so interesting about the way that Terrence innovates and places himself he's fearless in placing himself

in different situation very confident but very you know it's almost like he's an actor and of course because he's been involved with so much great film music

through his long-time association with Spike Lee and many of his and others. And actually, thinking back years ago, I was, I don't think I ever, I did some soundtrack recording with Terrence. I never did any of Spike Lee's movies, but we did some other movies. And he thinks, like, musically,

as he's moving through stuff, even as he's improvising very cinematically. And I don't know if that was just something he already had or if he developed it as he was working with movies or if they kind of worked up each other. But it seems to be in his person. I think so, yeah. And so it's, you know, it's atmospheric for sure.

It's cinematic. There's a lot of storytelling. But I think as he places himself in these different situations, what always pulls it together is his sound. Because he probably has the most distinctive trumpet sound. Oh, man. Since Louis Armstrong, dare I say. I mean, that's nothing, no shade on Miles Davis or Nicholas Payton or Clifford Brown or whatever.

Of course, you can tell them too. but I mean, Terrence's sound, let's just say it's as distinctive as anybody. Yeah. But I mean, for a horn player, I mean, it's just, you know it's him. So on this recording, on this track, first track, this being first track Fridays, as we know.

And as we explore this for the first time, what was striking to me is, you know, the E collective, and I always think about, I don't know if this is actually what it is, the electric collective, but I know that was part of it, kind of more, you know,

he was sort of known for having his bands be more acoustic situation. Sure, yeah. But this is more of an electric. situation. But really, this is a very organic acoustic sound, except the trumpet in a way, because of the effect on the trumpet. And you can hear it so much, at least in this track, with the delay and then with the, what would you call that, like the duplication. It's not really chorus. It was, it's some kind of filter. It's like a delay. A delay. Yeah. Yeah. But it's

so striking. But that kind of places his very distinctive sound in yet another place. But it's still him. Like he's kind of the one who pulls us together. Yeah. And it's, I mean, this was just like a slow boil and simmer and build to, you know. My only note, and this is not a criticism, because I'm sure that this gets dealt with as the recording goes along, I would say not a lot of string quartet action, very supportive role. I kind of almost forgot they were there until they would come back in.

Or was I missing something? No, yeah. I mean, we kind of talked about this before we started the episode. We both recorded a bunch with strings. It's really hard to record. and mix a rhythm section with strings. Yeah. And so I noted that when they were there,

they did a really fine job of making room in the mix for them. Because it's really, you just, essentially, if you try to put them with a full blazing rhythm section like this, with piano and guitar and bass and drums, you're only going to hear the violin, like the first violin. And you've got to put them up, and it's not even on all registers. Yeah, you won't hear the violoncello because they're just going to get buried. So I thought they actually, it seems like he's picking his punches here,

Like he's pulling his, I mean, he's obviously had so much experience writing for all different kinds of orchestrations and ensembles that he knows that. Yeah. And then he's using them sparingly. But I thought it was very effective. Very effective. When they came in, I thought it was a very well-placed version of that as opposed to just trying to, oh, we've got strings. Let's put them on everything. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure that they're going to have different times to shine as the record unfolds, which is great. Like you kind of introduce it. Because this track... I'm a cheesy hack, so I know I would put like, here's the one where the strings are featured, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. But it's nice to kind of introduce him because really this track,

I mean, as much as there's so much beautiful playing, as much as Terrence is just really kind of tour to force in a lot of ways. I would call this a very piano-centric, very Fabian-centric track. Why wouldn't you, though, with that touch? Yeah, no, he's touch, and it's just like the constant, like, it's really, everything's focused around the piano in a lot of ways. Yeah. But very interesting kind of spinning and swirling around it.

Dare I say, is that almost a. His signature, though? He loves piano. Terrence is a, yeah. He uses it quite a bit. And he's an incredible pianist himself. Yeah. And I wonder if he composes, you know, from the piano.

I know he does sometimes, but I mean, I mean, from that position of, like, setting. I mean, not a bad place to have everything revolving around. You're biased, but it does add a lot. No, I love that. I can't wait to listen to the rest of it. Are we going to go to a star system? I think we should for this First Track Friday. Oh, that's a great idea.

Yeah, like one to five star. reading here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to give it, I would give this absence just based on that first track. I would give it four and a half. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. I mean, that, for me, that's as good, almost as good of a first track. Maybe, maybe four and a quarter, four and a quarter, four and a half, four and a half, somewhere in there. Okay. I'm not, you know me, man. It's going to be hard for me to go in the twos ever. Right. I'm very giving. It's going hard for you get to five, too, though. I'm a positive guy. Right, right. Yeah. Well, I'm going five stars on this.

You're going five stars on this. I mean, you do what, you know. You know. need to do. I mean, just because there was nothing, it was great. It was great and there was nothing there was nothing wanting. Like it made me want to continue on the journey. I love the story. Like is this record going to end up being my favorite or my top 10 of all time? I don't know. Maybe not. But to me, it can be a five track or four and a half stars for those that are picky, obviously, better, bigger ears, more season perhaps than me. But to me, there was nothing that was lacking as in terms of being, not even an introduction, just the beginning of an album that didn't want to draw me in. The only thing for me that didn't make it a five-star first track was that if you were to tell me,

what would it sound like if Terrence Blanchard wrote a track that was the first track of an album inspired by Wayne Shorter with the E-collective in the Turtle Island string quartet, I would say that would sound something like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I don't want to say it was. Expectations were high. I don't want to say it was predictable at all because it certainly wasn't musically, but it didn't, like, super surprise me.

Right. That was all. Right. Well, that's the hard thing about high expectations is that that does hurt you in the rating system. But not for me. I'm going five stars. Love you, T. Yeah.

Awesome stuff. We'll be back, of course, next Friday. Or maybe Monday. I don't know. We'll see how it works out with the alliteration. No, I love it, man. Thank you for this. Thank you, Terrence Blanchard and Fabian and the entire band.

Wayne Shorter. Yeah. Big shout out to Wayne. Until next time, everybody. You'll hear it.