Met Opera’s First Black Composer: A “Sea Change” Is Coming

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, in its 138-year history, the Metropolitan Opera in New York has never hosted a performance by black composer until now. The pandemic close The Met for a year-and-a-half. And it’s reopened with “Fire Shut Up In My Bones,” which is a new opera by the six-time Grammy-winning musician and composer Terence Blanchard. His New York — his new memoir is based on the memoir by “The New York Times” columnist Charles Blow. And he’s been speaking to Walter Isaacson about his artistic process.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And, Terence Blanchard, congratulations on the opening of your opera at The Met, and welcome to the show.

TERENCE BLANCHARD, COMPOSER: Thank you, Walter. It really means a lot.

ISAACSON: I was struck by the fact that you’re the first black composer to do an opera at The Met. And there haven’t been very many contemporary composers. And you do Charles Blow’s memoir of growing up in Louisiana, just like you did. Tell me about that opera.

BLANCHARD: Well, I chose it because of the notion of the isolation of him growing up in his own community, and him overcoming being molested by a family member. And the other reason why I chose it is because he’s still around. He’s still with us. He can be the shining example of what happens when you stick to your guns and when you have the resilience to get through anything. And when we did the opera in Saint Louis, I didn’t let Charles come to any rehearsals. And the night of the premiere, man, I really regretted it because I was scared to death. But after the premiere was over, I walked over to him, and I said: “Hey, man, are we OK?” And he said: “Yes, yes, yes, we’re good.” He says: “I realize that’s not me anymore.” And that statement to me was one of the reasons why I wanted to do his story, because that in itself — and then he went on to write a piece about it, but that, in itself, could be the motivating factor for a number of kids who are probably going through something similar.

ISAACSON: Tell me about reading Charles Blow’s memoir, and why you thought that would make a good opera.

BLANCHARD: Well, my wife read the book. My wife, Robin Burgess, she read it, and then handed it to me. And when I read it, the first thing I kept thinking about or the first thing that resonated with me was the notion of being isolated in your own community, a community that you really wanted to belong to, because I knew what that was like. You know, Walter, we grew up in a music town, but that doesn’t necessarily mean all of our neighborhoods were, like, really supportive of that young kid walking to the bus every weekend with his horn trying to go get that lesson. In my neighborhood, everybody wanted to be athletes, wanted to be football players and basketball players. And, at my home, we had this big bay window in the front. And the piano was right there. So when I was practicing my piano lessons, it wasn’t the most popular thing to do while all my boys were outside playing football. So I can understand what Charles was feeling in that situation. I wasn’t molested by a family member, so I can’t speak to that. But the whole isolationist thing was something that had a profound effect on me.

ISAACSON: But the scenes in the opera, I loved it when I saw it, but I didn’t feel like I was listening to jazz. It wasn’t a jazz opera. But it was an opera sort of in jazz, meaning it had a lot of the sort of syncopations and rhythms of it. Tell me, what were you aiming for? Were you trying to create a jazz opera?

BLANCHARD: No. No, no, no. That’s why we have been calling it an opera in jazz, for that very reason, because when I have met with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis at first, first thing they told me, they said, well, they felt like we haven’t really defined what American opera is. We know what German opera, French, Italian, obviously. And they said, well, maybe American opera should have some elements of jazz in it. And, for me, I went back to the whole notion of Stravinsky. I will never forget, when I was without Art Blakey, I went to Hungary for the first time. And, man, I’m walking around. And I heard some young musicians on the street playing these Hungarian folk songs. And I’m sitting there going, man, they’re playing Stravinsky.

(LAUGHTER)

BLANCHARD: And when I realized what was going on, it was a big education for me. So I held on to that idea for a number of years, obviously. And when it came time to do this, I said, what, that’s what I’m going to do here. I’m going to use the DNA of jazz. Sometimes, there are harmonic progressions that I’m using, but I’m not using it in a jazz setting. I’m using it more in the orchestral way. But the elements of it come from that world. Roger Dickerson told me, he said, listen, man, you’re gaining this experience of writing for orchestra with — in the movies. You need to start thinking about how you can incorporate the language and articulations and rhythms and harmony of jazz and what it is that you do with orchestra. So that’s what I have been doing. And it’s developed. It’s grew — it’s grown into this approach of writing that makes my music sound a little different.

ISAACSON: How did the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, how did that affect your work?

BLANCHARD: It had a huge effect on my work, because it had a huge effect on the country. When that event occurred, I have a lot of friends in New Orleans who are well-meaning people who saw that and started calling me, started texting me, asking me if I was OK. And I kept thinking, maybe something happened to a family member of mine. And I talked to one friend. I said, well, what’s going on? And he said, well, no, I just saw the video. And I realized that they finally saw what we have been talking about for generations in this country. And being a captive audience around the nation because of the pandemic, I know that it had a profound effect on a lot of people, which, in turn, made people feel like they needed to make some changes. So kudos to Peter Gelb, because even told me — he said that had a huge effect on him and his thinking about what he could do to stem the tide of intolerance and racism.

ISAACSON: Peter Gelb, who runs The Met, recruited you to do this. Do you think there’s going to be a change at The Met now that this worked out so well?

BLANCHARD: I know there is, because I met two young composers who had been commissioned by Peter, one of Asian descent and one who’s a female. And I think, that, in itself, speaks to what it is that I have been saying about not wanting to be a token. I want to be a turnkey. This can’t be a one-off. And I think Peter is committed to that. He’s also announced that he’s going to do Anthony Davis’ opera about Malcolm X. So, hopefully, this is — like, this will be a sea change in the world of opera, because at a time when opera was struggling trying to sell tickets, this opera has done extremely well.We have sold out just about every show. And I think there are new people who are coming to opera. As a matter of fact, when we did “Champion” in New Orleans, there was a gentleman who walked up to me after the show is in his mid-70s. and he said to me: “Man, if this is Opera, I will come.” And that blew me away. I went, see, if we do stories that are relevant to people’s lives, the way Puccini and Verdi and all those other guys did, people will probably see — feel a need to experience, because I have been trying to tell my friends, stop thinking of what you think opera is. This is the highest form of musical theater you can ever experience.

ISAACSON: You’re an only child, and your dad loved opera. I’d love to hear you talk about rattling around the house as a young kid, where your dad’s trying to make your love opera.

BLANCHARD: Well it was always kind of funny, man, because, in my neighborhood, opera wasn’t the most popular choice of music to listen to. So when my friends would come over, and my dad would be sitting in the front singing his parts to something he was working on, I would always rush them by the front room and say, man, let’s go in the back. And they would say, man, what are you doing? I’m like, dude, come on, let’s go. What is your dad doing? I’m like, don’t worry about that.

(LAUGHTER)

BLANCHARD: But any time a good piece of music or opera would come on PBS or anything, he would scream across the house: “Hey, Terence, come here, come here, come here.” And he would make me sit down and he’d make me listen to it. And he would say: “Now, see, that’s music. That’s music. See, that’s great music.” And I hated it when I was a kid, to be honest. But I grew to love the music when I became older. And I think it’s just so ironic that I’m in this world right now. I know — I have been telling everybody I know he’s up there looking at me going, I told you so.

ISAACSON: The first opera in America was staged in our hometown of New Orleans. And opera has been really a part of the city tradition. Louis Armstrong used to hang out at the French Opera House in the French Quarter listening to Puccini and others. Tell me about all the musical strands of New Orleans that come together both in your work and in music today.

BLANCHARD: Oh, man, it’s — I can’t even put it in the words, when there’s so many times I hear that beat, that street beat from New Orleans in other forms of music. I have talked to a friend of mine, Danilo Perez, who’s from Panama, and we even talk about how it influenced Latin music. Art Blakey used to talk about how the rhythm from New Orleans and the rhythm of Latin cultures is the same, just on the other side of the beat. If you say one, two, three, four, one, dinka-din, dinka-din, dinka-din. And then, in Latin music, it is dinka-din, dinka-din, dinka-din. So it’s a similar beat, just on the other side of the beat. And there’s so many elements from that I hear in all different types of music, the spiritually-based music, Mahalia Jackson and all the things that those people created and contributed to the world of music. We’re here today. There’s one aria that we do in the piece called “Peculiar Grace,” where Angel Blue responded to a conversation that we had the first day of rehearsal, where I told them. I said, I know a lot of you guys grew up in the church. And you’re told to put that aside when you’re going to sing classic opera, when you’re going to sing Puccini. You can’t bring that into that, right? I understand it. But, here, I want you to bring all of that back to the stage. And Angel responded in a way that is so hauntingly beautiful with this one aria that I feel very, very blessed to have all of these extremely talented people on board.

ISAACSON: In your opera, you really honor tradition. I mean, this is a very traditional form. And, in jazz, you honor tradition. And yet what you also have to do is break tradition. You have to break away from the mold. How do you balance breaking tradition with honoring tradition?

BLANCHARD: Well, the first thing is to really study the history and to know your craft. That’s the first thing, because knowing the craft, then I will be able to say, OK, well Stravinsky did this, this way, but I’m going to add this element to it, I’m going to add this type of harmonic passage to it, I’m going to add this orchestration to it. And it’s really interesting, because, like, I love Puccini, and I love the way that he writes for voice, the way sometimes he will double the vocal line with the orchestra. So there are elements of those things that I take that are structural, right, that are not actual phrases. But I take those things and I implement them in the way that I see fit for the way that I create phrases. So, it’s — that’s the way of honoring the tradition, but still moving forward. I always have to tell my students what Ellis Marsalis used to tell us all the time. He said a turtle never gets in the way unless he sticks his neck
out.

(LAUGHTER)

BLANCHARD: So you got to take a chance every now and then.

ISAACSON: You did the “Tale of God’s Will,” which won a Grammy. And it was a requiem for Hurricane Katrina. Tell me how Katrina — it really hit your neighborhood pretty bad, Pontchartrain Park in New Orleans. Tell me how Katrina affected your work.

BLANCHARD: Oh, it had a huge effect on my work. As a matter of fact, that album is the reason why I’m doing opera, because Jim Robinson, he told me that’s one of his desert island albums. And it was a reason — that that was the thing that made him think about me writing opera. That moment in time was something I could have never fathomed. And, Walter, I was so hurt when the realization of those train tracks in my neighborhood being above the roofline in our neighborhood finally made sense. Every movie that I saw when I was a kid, train tracks were on the ground. They were street level. And I never understood why the train tracks in my neighborhood were so high. And then when Hurricane Katrina came in, when I saw that satellite photo of my neighborhood, where the only thing I could see was water, rooftops, and those train tracks, that had a heavy effect on me in terms of how I felt betrayed by government. And it made me realize we’re all in this together, because that was the beautiful side of that tragedy. When Hurricane Katrina hit that area, man, we didn’t have any red or blue states. Everybody was on the same page, trying to help anyone in need. And that really clued me into how powerful human nature is, the human spirit, our willingness to help brothers when they need it. And that was a turning point of what I was telling you earlier about how I wanted to create music to help people heal.

ISAACSON: Tell me about — you have spent 30 years scoring films for Spike Lee, including “When the Levees Broke” about Katrina. Tell me what it’s like to work for him in scoring movies, what’s that’s like.

BLANCHARD: Working with Spike, man, has been a godsend, because he’s such a unique filmmaker that it’s always challenged me. I remember when I first started working with Spike, he kept telling me: “I don’t like underscore. I want to hit melody. I want to hear themes.” And then, sometimes — I think it was “Summer of Sam,” one of those early films. I was talking to him about: “You sure you want theme here, because there’s a lot of dialogue here?” And he would tell me — he got upset with me one day. And he goes: “Listen, man, it’s been scientifically proven that the brain can focus on more than one thing at one time.” And I went, OK, got it. But that, in itself, made me realize I need to figure out ways of writing these orchestrations that will carry the themes the way he wants them to, but still won’t get in the way of important dialogue. And that, in itself, I think has allowed me to develop the style that people recognize in my film writing. And he’s just been — I don’t even know how to explain it. He’s one of these guys that is so secure with what he does, that he gives you room. Like, when I’m working with Spike, the only thing he asks is for me to send him themes. And when I send him the themes, and then he starts to assign them to characters, I literally don’t hear from him until it’s time to go into the studio. When we did “Da 5 Bloods,” the last film, I didn’t hear from him until we got in the studio. Then, when I got in the studio, I just made sure everything was the way he loves it. I know what he likes. And I think he does that because he wants to have the reaction that an audience would have by hearing the music for the first time.

ISAACSON: You have got a great new album out called “Absence.” And I think Branford Marsalis, I have heard one of the cuts, was playing “Go” with you on it, and it’s a homage to Wayne Shorter. Tell me why.

BLANCHARD: Well, Wayne Shorter is one of our great American treasures, I think. I think Wayne Shorter has been a person that has been so meaningful in my life. I know that for sure, because I learned so much from him. I didn’t want to wait until he was no longer with us for me to tell him how much I love his music, how much I love him as a person and a musician, and show him that by putting this album together. And what I thought would be most interesting for him would be not to just do an album of his music, but to combine his music with original music from the guy in the band to show him how he’s influenced us in our writing. And it’s just a love letter to Wayne Shorter, because he’s meant so much to so many people.

ISAACSON: Terence Blanchard, thank you so very much.

BLANCHARD: Thank you, Walter. It’s good seeing you, man.