Terence Blanchard was in the house — or, more accurately, his house — on Thursday night.
And he’d use the occasion to deliver a stellar jazz show before a highly appreciative audience at the SFJAZZ Center. It was the first of a four-night run at the pristine performance space, which Blanchard helps oversee and program in his role as SFJAZZ executive artistic director.
But he’d check his executive artistic director hat at the door and focus on his roles as trumpeter extraordinaire, exemplary bandleader and self-effacing/charming MC as he celebrated the 20th anniversary of one of his greatest triumphs — the Grammy-nominated 2005 album “Flow.”
“I really appreciate you guys being here, celebrating me feeling old — the 20th anniversary of an album that feels like came out two weeks ago,” Blanchard said to the audience early in the approximately 100-minute set.
Blanchard — who is also an Oscar-nominated film composer — was accompanied by his tremendously versatile and powerful E-Collective band, which features Bay Area talents Charles Altura on guitar and Julian Pollack on piano/keyboards as well as David Ginyard Jr. on bass and Oscar Seaton on drums.
Yet, the audience was surely expecting even more musicians to take the stage as well, given that the show was marketed as being a collaboration with the Bay Area’s own Turtle Island Quartet. Even the tickets had the group’s name printed on them.
According to SFJAZZ, it was a last minute decision by Blanchard not to have the quartet perform on Thursday — which makes sense since “Flow” doesn’t feature string work on it. Yet, organizers are saying that Turtle Island will be in the mix — and on the stage — during the remainder of what should be a truly incredible run.
Moving on from “Flow,” Blanchard was scheduled to perform music from the Grammy winner “A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina)” on Nights 2 and 3. The finale, on Sunday, calls for amazing vocalist Dianne Reeves to also take the stage. For tickets and more information, visit sfjazz.org.
The show opened with the title track to “Flow” — which is actually divided into three parts on the gorgeous parent album — as Pollack took the stage first and began to craft some trippy mood music on the keys. The muscular rhythm section of Ginyard Jr. and Seaton joined in next, with Blanchard and Altura not far behind, and the E-Collective was in full swing, propelling the whole sound even higher into outer space while wildly imaginative sci-fi imagery was being beamed onto the wall behind the band.
The troupe stayed in the “Flow” (literally and figuratively) as it moved into “Benny’s Tune,” one of the album’s three tracks penned by Lionel Loueke — who also played guitar and added vocals on the recording. Marcus Strickland made a guest appearance during this number, delivering some funky cool sax to the mix as he combined with Blanchard to bring “Benny’s Tune” to a very satisfying close.
The Blanchard original “Wandering Wonder” made it three “Flow” tunes in a row (and, somewhat surprisingly, the last offering from the album of the set), as Blanchard punctuated this lively, bright number with some of the most powerful and vibrant trumpet work of the night while Seaton brought the thunder on drums.
“I’ve always viewed this place as a breeding ground for creativity — so we are about to breed,” Blanchard joked with the SFJAZZ Center audience, before reconsidering whether the joke actually worked or not. “Sorry — it was funny in the moment.”
That intro took us right to “Prism,” a brand new song that was being performed for the very first time onstage. The result was a definite keeper that slowly pulsates with a kind of funky heaviness not unlike what one might have gotten if Maceo Parker, not Ozzy Osbourne, had fronted Black Sabbath. That thickness in the air, where the rhythm work wraps you like a sleeping bag, served as an unexpected stage for Altura to showcase his rapid-fire fret work.
“We’re having fun,” Blanchard exclaimed. “You guys having fun?”
We certainly were as the players moved into “Confident Selflessness,” a Blanchard-penned old-school jazz-rock fusion number that could’ve hailed straight from the pages of the Return to Forever songbook and included some bruising drum work from Seaton. (Speaking of RTF, I kept hearing a definite Chick Corea influence in much of the music made on Thursday — but maybe that was just all the sci-fi imagery projected on the walls talking.)
The group closed the main set with another new song — “Sprocket” — with is a nice tribute to Herbie Hancock. The players then returned to finish up the terrific set with an encore of “Chaos,” which surely left many people in the house (this critic included) wishing they had tickets for the other shows in Blanchard’s current run at SFJAZZ Center.
