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Terence Blanchard is an internationally celebrated jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, arranger, and Golden Globe-nominated film score composer. The past two years have been incredibly prolific for him on a number of levels. Blanchard's most recent album, A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina), is a 13-track emotional tour de force of anger, rage, compassion, melancholy and beauty.

The Grammy-Award-wining album features Blanchard's quintet-pianist Aaron Parks, saxophonist Brice Winston, bassist Derrick Hodge, drummer Kendrick Scott-as well as a 40-member string orchestra. This is his third release for Blue Note Records since signing with the label in 2003. He has released two other critically acclaimed albums, Bounce and Flow, the latter of which was nominated for two Grammys in 2006. Blanchard has also composed scores for several celebrated Spike Lee films such as Mo' Better Blues, and his most recent, When The Levees Broke, which documents the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Blanchard's haunting and intensely personal score is expressive of his own experience in the disaster.

"This is what we are called to do as artists," he says. "We document our social surroundings and give our impressions of events. The problem with Katrina is that the devastation is so vast that there's only been a trickle of art so far. We're all still digesting what went on and what continues to happen. It's like an unending story. For me, like so many others, it's taken me a moment to get my mind around all of this. I knew I needed to express this musically to keep the story alive, but so many important things-the safety of family members, figuring out how to rebuild my mother's house-never allowed me the time to breathe for a minute."