Young Trumpet Star Brings Newfound Sound to Elario’s

After 18 months of revamping his physical approach to the trumpet, Terence Blanchard is unveiling on his current tour, which stops at Elario’s this week, what he feels is a more mature sound.

Blanchard, 29, first gained critical acclaim as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers during the early 1980s, and then later teamed with fellow Blakey alumni, alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, on five mid-1980s recordings.

For the past 18 months, Blanchard has kept a low profile while overcoming a critical problem with his embouchure--the way a horn player puts his lips together to meet the mouthpiece.

“A friend said, ‘You’re tucking your bottom lip,’ and that’s when it clicked,” recalled Blanchard, who sensed his musical development was at a standstill in late 1989. “My bottom lip used to curl over my bottom teeth instead of being in front of them. My new sound is definitely broader, but I don’t want to make judgments yet. It’s still developing.”

After the revelation, Blanchard’s personal career went on hold while he played the trumpet parts on the sound track for director Spike Lee’s movie “Mo’ Better Blues.” Blanchard is also scoring Lee’s new film, “Jungle Fever,” due in June.

“The film scoring gave me time to sit home and practice,” said Blanchard, who formed a new band a year ago and recorded his first solo album last December. It will be released in June and contains mostly original material, much of which Blanchard is featuring on his current tour, along with a number of standards.

Blanchard grew up in New Orleans, where he studied both classical and jazz in his teens and was friendly with the Marsalis family, including now-famous peers Wynton, the trumpeter, and Branford, the saxophonist.

“They were a motivating force,” said Blanchard, who lives in Brooklyn. “When I was growing up, there were not many people who had the same interests, so it was good to have them around.”

Blanchard studied classical music at Rutgers while playing jazz with Lionel Hampton during the early 1980s and matured musically through associations with several jazz giants, including Elvin Jones, Billy Taylor and Tony Williams. He said the legends passed on an important lesson which has helped him through the struggle to retool his sound.

“They told me, ‘Be yourself, accept who you are.’ A lot of times when we’re learning, we want to mold ourselves into someone else’s stature, which doesn’t necessarily fit us or our work.”

Blanchard and his band open five nights at Elario’s on Wednesday, with shows nightly at 8:30 and 10:30.

Pop stars such as David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Sting and Paul Simon have helped tropical rhythms gain broader exposure. Now, practitioners of this authentic music are enjoying a larger following in this country.

In San Diego, one beneficiary is the band Sol E Mar, with roots in Brazilian and Afro-Cuban rhythms. The band, which plays the U.S. Grant Hotel every Saturday night during May and June (except May 25), is among a handful of local groups (also including Afro Rumba and Quarteto Agape) that has been raising Latin music’s profile at venues including the Grant and Croce’s.

“Local clubs and hotels have been real scared about having something different from straight Top 40 or Lites Out jazz,” said percussionist Mark Lamson, who founded Sol E Mar four years ago with bassist Kevin Delgado. In part, the club owners’ fears had to do with attracting ethnically diverse audiences, according to Lamson.

“Now they’re realizing that there is potential in this. The Latin community in this city is growing. A lot of Brazilians have moved here, especially in Point Loma and Ocean Beach, in the last year or two. Little by little, as clubs take the chance of having Latin music, the large audiences prove there is a big Latin crowd just waiting for a place to go.

“Pop stars who have used these musical influences have helped, but they’re not the only reason for the change. The lambada thing was here and gone real quick, but it did open people up to Brazilian music. And it wasn’t just opening audiences up to the music, but opening club owners’ minds to the music, that there is money to be made, and not to be afraid of having a mixed crowd. Club owners are more conservative than the public (when it comes to racially mixed audiences). They think there will be gang violence on the dance floor, which is so ridiculous.”

Lamson and Delgado got hooked on Brazilian and Afro-Cuban rhythms while studying music at San Diego State University, then went to Brazil and Cuba to learn more from primary sources. Lamson has become a master of Brazilian and Afro-Cuban percussion, and he teaches Saturday morning percussion classes at the Marquis Public Theater.

Sol E Mar actually has two lineups: a Latin jazz quintet, which plays club dates, and a larger Brazilian percussion and dance ensemble, which performs for special events and festivals.

At the Grant, the Sol E Mar quintet’s Saturday night performances start at 8.

RIFFS: Dave Koz, a pretender to Kenny G’s cotton candy jazz sax throne, plays the Bacchanal next Monday night at 8:30, sharing a bill with vocalist Phil Perry. The best cut on Koz’s self-titled last album is “Love of My Life,” an out-of-character, Prince-like funk ramble. . . .

Benny Hollman’s Latin Big Band Explosion appears this Saturday afternoon at 5 on the main stage at the eighth annual Cinco de Mayo festival in Old Town. . . .

Pop jazz saxophonist Michael Paulo, whose newest album “Fusebox” is heavy on tired synthesized bass and drum patterns and short on musical sparks, closes the five-week “Champagne Jazz” series at the Culbertson Winery in Temecula on Sunday afternoon from 4 to 6 . . . .

This Saturday night at 8 at All That Jazz in Rancho Bernardo, pianist Jimmy Rowles appears with his fluegelhorn-playing daughter Stacy Rowles.

CRITIC’S CHOICE: MASTERFUL JOE WILLIAMS AT POWAY CENTER

For style, finesse and genuine swing, you can’t top singer Joe Williams, who made his professional debut in the 1930s with clarinetist Jimmie Noone. Since then, Williams, 72, has paired his pipes with Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson and both the Ellington and Basie big bands. Though he has worked with a hall of fame’s worth of jazz legends, Williams is, at heart, an authentic blues belter whose smooth, smoky voice charges any tune, jazz or blues, with decades worth of sorrow and joy. Williams plays the Poway Center for the Performing Arts at 8 p.m. this Saturday.