Five-time Grammy winner, Oscar nominee, and composer Terence Blanchard will be honored as a BMI Icon on May 15 during the 35th annual Film, TV and Visual Media Awards of Broadcast Music Inc.
A world-renowned jazz trumpeter and film composer with more than 33 albums and 50 film scores to his credit, Blanchard is also a 2018 US Artists Fellow, and most recently, an Academy Award nominee for his music in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman.
As one of Lee’s preferred composers, Blanchard has scored the documentary When the Levees Broke—about Blanchard’s hometown of New Orleans during the devastation from Hurricane Katrina—as well as the epic Malcolm X, Inside Man, and 25th Hour.
Past BMI honorees include Alan Silvestri, James Newton Howard, Alexandre Desplat, Rachel Portman, David Newman, Thomas Newman, Danny Elfman, Harry Gregson-Williams, John Williams, and many others.
The ceremony will also honor composer, arranger, orchestrator, and conductor William Ross with the BMI Classic Contribution Award.
Composers of the previous year’s top-grossing films, top-rated primetime network television series, and highest-ranking cable and streamed media programs will be recognized throughout the ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.
JazzTimes featured Blanchard in 2007 soon after When the Levees Broke was released. Read that story here.
