Terence Blanchard's History-Making Met Opera Debut

Plus, remembering Dr. Lonnie Smith [View this email online]( [NPR Music]( by Marissa Lorusso [Will Liverman (center) as Charles in Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones.]( Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera This week, for the first time in its 138-year history, [New York’s Metropolitan Opera presented an opera by a Black composer.]( That work was Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on the memoir of the same title by Charles M. Blow and composed by Terence Blanchard. As a trumpeter, Blanchard has played with jazz legends like Lionel Hampton and Art Blakey, and has won five Grammys for his jazz records. He has also carved out a career in film music, and has been nominated for two Academy Awards for his film scores. He says Fire Shut Up in My Bones, though, is not a jazz opera — rather, he calls it "an opera in Jazz." Nate Chinen, director of editorial content at WBGO, [attended the triumphant premiere]( describing the music as “glowingly consonant but full of subtle harmonic and timbral surprises.” Blanchard wasn’t necessarily the obvious choice to break The Met's streak of operas by white composers, he says, “but as Monday's triumphant performance showed, he was the right one.” Blanchard and his collaborators “seized the opportunity,” Nate writes, “making Fire an undeniable declaration of their assertive presence.” --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- New Music - Rapper Meek Mill vowed his latest record, Expensive Pain, would be his best yet. 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