Wrapping up the second weekend of Jazz Fest weekend on Sunday, May 4, Terence Blanchard, a proponent of music education and five-time Grammy Award winning trumpeter and composer, hosted an intimate gathering in his English Turn home for Grammy U, a national program of the National Academy of Arts & Sciences, where he serves on the Advisory committee.
GRAMMY U is a unique and fast-growing community of college students, primarily between the ages of 17 and 25, who are pursuing a career in the recording industry. The Recording Academy created GRAMMY U to help prepare college students for their careers in the music industry through networking, educational programs and performance opportunities. GRAMMY U is designed to enhance students’ current academic curriculum with access to recording industry professionals to give an “out of classroom” perspective on the recording industry.
The event featured performances by students from the University of Miami Frost School of Music’s Henry Mancini Institute where Blanchard serves as Artistic Director of Jazz. The Mancini students also joined Blanchard on his closing set at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. To highlight that music education begins early, Terence Blanchard and his wife Robin Burgess invited high school students from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts to perform at the event. The NOCCA Jazz ensemble included their daughter Sidney Blanchard who is studying piano at NOCCA. Guests included piano great Henry Butler, Festival producer Darlene Chan, rising saxophonist Khris Royal and many other guests from across the country. Ending the night was DJ Brice Nice who kept the beats going well into the evening.
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In addition to the amazing talent on hand, the party was an elegant gathering where guests mingled inside and outdoors under majestic palms overlooking the club’s expansive golf courses. The food was an eclectic mixture of fun vendors such as Woody’s Tacos, Plum Street Snowballs and Two Girls, One Shuck, all-female oyster shuckers. The weather cooperated wonderfully to make all the events magical.
For more information on Grammy U, go to www.grammy365.com/grammy-u or go to Terence’s site at www.terenceblanchard.com.