Jazz Artist Terrance Blanchard Lauds Breathing

The Blue Note jazz label recently sponsored the PDX JazzFest here in Portland. Trumpeter Terence Blanchard waxed eloquent in a story in the Oregonian. We couldn't resist:

"In the Q&A, a questioner pressed Blanchard for elaboration of a statement he'd made earlier about the importance of breath in connecting to the spirit of music. Blanchard takes breath very seriously. Very. Seriously. He meditates, for example, and chants. When he composes music, he sings it to connect to it better emotionally. 'In a technical sense, it (breathing) makes you stop, makes you pause,' he observed, and that 'gives us a chance to talk.' Meaning that it keeps conversation from being a one-way street. For the past 13 or 14 years, Blanchard has been boxing, which has increased his wind capacity, he says, and made his sound bigger as a result. And each bout is like a concert -- 'You never know where the bout is going to take you.'

"The chanting and meditation and breathing have taught him one important thing: 'You have to allow it to do with you what it wants to do.' He explained that one of his mentors, band leader Art
Blakey, made a big deal of integrating the mind and the emotions. As Blanchard explained it: 'The brain says this is hip; the heart says, yeah, but not right now.'"

We couldn't have put it better ourselves. For more on the power of the breath, visit www.PerfectBreath.com.

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