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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans-born and based jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard has been named a visiting scholar in the Berklee College of Music's jazz composition department.
The program begins this fall.
Blanchard also will contribute to the Boston school's film scoring and brass departments and work for the Berklee Global Jazz Institute.
"Coming to Berklee feels like I'm coming home," Blanchard said in a statement Monday. "Even though I never went to Berklee, I hang out there a great deal and learn a lot from my friends who went there.
"Recently, I was guest teaching and was amazed at how much the school has grown and created new avenues for expression. I am really looking forward to joining the faculty and will do my best to add to an already great team of educators," he said.
Berklee president Roger Brown said in a news release that Blanchard is "a triple threat: a composer of the highest order in film and jazz, a widely admired performer, and someone who has devoted himself to teaching and passing the tradition along to the next generation."
After graduating from the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts in 1981, Blanchard replaced Wynton Marsalis in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, released joint albums with saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., then moved on to solo projects. Spike Lee tapped Blanchard for his first film score. He has now scored more than 40 films.
For years, Blanchard served as an instructor at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz based at the University of Southern California. When the Institute announced plans to move, Blanchard, among others, lobbied for New Orleans. In the fall of 2007, the Institute moved temporarily to Loyola University.
Blanchard and his current band, the E-Collective, will release a new album, "Breathless," on May 26.
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