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by Paul Bass | Jun 16, 2006 12:04 pm

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Posted to: Arts

Same downtown courtyard, a different vibe: Terence Blanchard brought another uplifting night of jazz to Arts & Idea. “Jazz” by another name.

New Orleans-born Blanchard, a Grammy-winning trumpeter and composer known for his Spike Lee soundtracks, is the inheritor of Miles Davis’ understated yet complex “cool jazz” mantle. He brought a quintet and their original compositions to Yale’s serene Branford College courtyard on High Street Thursday night. One night earlier the same courtyard had exploded amid threatening skies with the fast-paced, rap-to-hard-rock-tinged strains of David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness. Buffeted by a gentle breeze and calm skies, Blanchard’s ensemble filled the air with mellower sounds.

At first it felt like someone had drained the energy from the space. The band was playing competently, improvising in directions that were hard to absorb. Then came the third number. And everything changed.

Derrick Hodge, who played the upright bass, wrote the number, called “Over There.” Blanchard described it as a rumination, amid tumultuous events like the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina, amid the lures of seemingly better opportunities in other places, on the need to appreciate what you have.

As the band slipped into the piece’s meditative, open-ended paces, dusk settled onto the courtyard as if engineered by the lighting crew. The breeze served as a third wind instrument. You immediately felt the power of hearing and seeing this kind of music in an intimate outdoor setting, as opposed to, say, amid tens of thousands on the Green. Under the soft glow of the stage lights, you could watch the musicians react and interact to the improvisation. As Aaron Parks picked out a Keith Jarrett-like exploration on the keyboards, you could see bandleader Blanchard concentrate, then snap a syncopated rhythm that first came as a surprise, then explained the underlying direction of the piece.

So it continued with each subsequent slow-paced, deliberate, low-decibel number as darkness enveloped the grass courtyard facing the stage. You could see Blanchard’s concentration as he dipped, trumpet toward the floor, to pluck a sweet note hidden behind a shell of scattered notes. You could see the playful call and response between Blanchard and saxophonist Brice Winston as they exchanged short bursts. You picked up on the musicians’ wordless teasing and quest for harmony. This was as intense and emotional as the night before, but with only occasional crescendos; the beauty was in the gentle, roaming exploration.

“We hope you had as good a time as we did,” Blanchard said at the end of the set. “Sometimes we get carried away.” Then the band slid into a melodic, piano-dominated encore reminiscent of the trasncendent coda to Jarrett’s 1975 Köln recording. Yes, there’s another name for this kind of “jazz.” Need we say it out loud?

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