Malcolm X Jazz Suite

In 1982, Terence Blanchard replaced his hometown pal Wynton Marsalis in the trumpet chair in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and now Blanchard has emerged as Marsalis's only real rival as a modern composer of jazz suites in the Ellington mode. As the composer and orchestrator for Spike Lee's Jungle Fever and Malcolm X, Blanchard has displayed the ability to reinforce the shifting emotions of an ongoing narrative and to come up with striking melodic motifs that are repeated in altered forms throughout a long piece. Now Blanchard has taken the strongest motifs from the latter film and rearranged them for his brilliant jazz quintet, and has recorded the result as The Malcolm X Jazz Suite. --Geoffrey Himes