Terence Blanchard Quintet at Yoshi’s

Yoshi’s, Oakland — August 29, 2009 — 8:00 p.m.

With more than 50 film scores under his belt, it’s no surprise that trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s music often has an evocative, metaphoric quality. He is a master of capturing a scene, but to call his music cinematic is not enough. Blanchard is an auteur, penetrating to the emotional core of his subject and exposing it to the light.

This quality was at the fore in his early set on Saturday, the second of three nights at Yoshi’s. In the space of an hour, Blanchard’s quintet told a most compelling story, moving deliberately from gentle introspection through an assertive surge, collapsing into melancholy and self-doubt, but finally emerging stronger than before with forceful declarations of purpose and hope.

The set focused on music from Blanchard’s latest CD, Choices (released last week on the Concord Jazz label). On the disc, the band backs singer Bilal on several tracks and flows around spoken-word interludes by Dr. Cornel West on others. Neither was on hand this night, but Dr. West’s presence was felt through a series of recorded snippets that faded in and out as the band played, setting context for the music as West expounded on the choices that determine what kind of people we become and the notion of musical eloquence as a counterpart to speech.

Blanchard’s playing was bold and incisive. Leaning into his horn as he played, he alternately held his trumpet perpendicular to the floor and raised to the sky, as if literally heaving the notes of his solos from moaning depths up to a piercing cry. Tenor saxophonist Brice Winston’s insistent phrasing and clean yet full-bodied tone proved a consistent crowd-pleaser, as he balanced logical progressions with unbridled power, pushed constantly by drummer Kendrick Scott.

Scott’s drumming was the dynamo that drove the band, an upwelling of rhythm that seemed to surge upwards from somewhere deep underground, bubbling quietly in the ballads before boiling over into a seething cauldron of sound for the uptempo tunes. Perhaps the set’s most remarkable moment came in a face-off between Blanchard and Scott, each prodding and daring the other in a cyclone of ever-bigger, louder statements until finally, as if calling in reinforcements, Blanchard stomped on an effects pedal and summoned a phalanx of virtual trumpeters to push him over the top.

With all this going on, it would have been easy to overlook pianist Fabian Almazan and bassist Michael Olatuja, neither of whom spent much time in the spotlight after the first two numbers. When he did solo, Almazan dazzled with inventive lines, light-dappled and shifting, condensing into single, repeated chords and bursting into winding streams of notes. And Olatuja, despite his status as the band’s newest member, opened the set with a lengthy, lyrical solo that set the tone for the evening: a night of tales rich with depth and meaning, spun by a band of fine storytellers.

Filed Under: Concert Reviews

Tags: Brice Winston, Fabian Almazan, Kendrick Scott, Michael Olatuja, Oakland, Terence Blanchard, Yoshi's