Pittsburgh Cultural TrustGo to the home page

Featuring Terence Blanchard, The E-Collective, Turtle Island Quartet & Special Guest visuals by Andrew F. Scott

Co-Presented by Pittsburgh Opera

The evening includes a post-show Q&A with Terence Blanchard and members of the cast."

In September 2021, after The Metropolitan Opera had been shuttered for over a year, the world renowned institution opened its season with the first work in its 138 years written by an African American composer— TERENCE BLANCHARD’s masterpiece Fire Shut Up In My Bones.

The production, which was a remount of the premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2019, was performed eight (8) times for almost 30,000 people, not to mention the hundreds of thousands that watched The MET: LIVE in HD in theaters all over the world.

Not only is this a masterwork, but a cultural flashpoint. The message? That opera and classical music is for EVERYONE. In an effort to continue that message, Blanchard and The E-Collective have teamed up with David Balakrishnan and his double GRAMMY-winning Turtle Island Quartet and visual artist Andrew F. Scott to create a concert production that features excerpts from the opera performed by the composer, this incredible ensemble, and guest vocalists Will Liverman and Adrienne Danrich. The music and Scott’s video projections give the audience a look inside the mind of Blanchard, and the gravitational pull of the moment that he has created.

About Terence Blanchard

Two-time Oscar nominee and seven-time Grammy-winner Terence Blanchard has been a consistent artistic force for making powerful musical statements concerning painful American tragedies – past and present.

From his expansive work composing the scores for almost 20 Spike Lee projects over three decades, ranging from the documentary When the Levees Broke to the latest Lee film, Da 5 Bloods, Blanchard has interwoven beautiful melodies that created strong backdrops to human stories. Blanchard received an Oscar nomination for his original score for Da 5 Bloods in 2021 which marked his second nomination. Blanchard previously received an Oscar nomination for his original score for Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. Blanchard becomes only the second Black composer to be nominated twice in the original score category, duplicating Quincy Jones’ feat from 1967’s In Cold Blood and 1985’s The Color Purple.

For One Night in Miami… which marked Regina King’s feature directorial debut and premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, the Academy Award winning actress tapped the talents of Blanchard as did Gaz Alazraki, the director of Father of the Bride which debuted on HBO Max. Some of Blanchard’s other film and television credits include Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, 25th Hour and Inside Man; Kasi Lemmons’ films, Eve’s Bayou and Harriet; George Lucas’ Red Tails; the critically acclaimed drama series Perry Mason starring Matthew Rhys with episodes directed by Tim Van Patten which debuted on HBO in June 2020, the National Geographic limited series Genius: Aretha which premiered in March 2021, HBO’s NYC Epicenters 9/11 – 2021 ½ documentary miniseries produced and directed by Spike Lee which premiered in August 2021, the Apple TV+ series Swagger which debuted in October 2021 and Apple TV’s docuseries They Call Me Magic which debuted on April 22, 2022 and for which Blanchard received his second Emmy nomination.

More recently, Blanchard wrote the original score for The Woman King directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood starring Viola Davis which premiered on September 16, 2022. Blanchard also arranged and produced songs for the upcoming feature A Jazzman’s Blues written, directed, and produced by Tyler Perry. In addition, Blanchard wrote the original score for the upcoming Apple TV+ documentary Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues directed by Sacha Jenkins and produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Documentaries, released in September during the Toronto International Film Festival.

Blanchard has composed his second opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on the memoir of celebrated writer and The New York Times columnist Charles Blow. The libretto was written by Kasi Lemmons and commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis where it premiered in June 2019. The New York Times has called Blanchard’s opera “inspiring,” “subtly powerful” and “a bold affecting adaptation of Charles Blow’s work.” The Metropolitan Opera premiered Fire Shut Up in My Bones on September 27, 2021 to open their 2021-22 season in New York, making it the first opera composed by an African American composer to premiere at the Met. Blanchard’s first opera, Champion also premiered to critical acclaim in 2013 at OTSL and starred Denyce Graves with a libretto from Pulitzer Prize Winner, Michael Cristofer. Champion was staged at the Met in April 2023, followed up a restaging of Fire Shut Up In My Bones in May 2024 due to record-setting box office & huge critical acclaim.