By FELICIA HANEY

Music, history, Black joy, and culture all collided at the intersection of Euclid Avenue and East Boulevard, better known as Severance Music Center, home of the world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra. Friday, May 15, kicked off the fourth annual Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival. At the absolute center of this year's festival is a groundbreaking creative partnership with legendary trumpeter, composer, and NEA Jazz Master Terence Blanchard. Acting as the festival's curator, Blanchard brought his immense, eclectic musical scope to Cleveland, weaving a thread through opera, jazz, poetry, and cinema to explore what it truly means to stand up and speak out. And it’s all done in the profound and timely theme of “Courage.”

When I heard he had been tapped to curate this year’s festival, I was in awe; one, because I knew he would not disappoint, and two, because Severance Music Center’s programming is usually not skewed to the darker hues (wink-wink). Admittedly, in the past couple of years, Severance has expanded their efforts to make sure we’re not only invited to the potluck but also that they’re using seasoning.

“Whenever I enter new artistic spaces, I strive to be a turnkey and not a token,” Blanchard said of this collaboration. Just because I am a prominent African-American voice in the room, doesn’t mean the work is done… This is where I see our theme of courage coming into play. Fear is the biggest culprit tearing us apart. But music can give us courage to do all things that we are afraid of doing.”

The festival opened with “The World(s) of Terence Blanchard” - a performance that served as a living map of Blanchard’s historic career — moving seamlessly from the orchestra pit to the jazz club to the Hollywood silver screen. Sidebar: How did I make it to today, years old before finding out that Blanchard did the original film score for Spike Lee’s 1992 classic, “Malcolm X”? I suppose as an eighth grader at the time, I wasn’t really checking for Terence Blanchard. But boy, have things changed!

“Malcolm X” holds a place among my top five films. So when I heard it was being reimagined as a backdrop to Blanchard’s stage performance, I was all in. Blanchard appeared on trumpet, of course accompanied by The E-Collective: Charles Altura (guitar), Tom Oren (piano), Alex Smith (bass), Mark Whitfield Jr. (drums), and the Turtle Island Quartet: David Balakrishnan and Gabriel Terracciano (violin), Mads Tolling (viola), Naseem Alatrash (cello). The auditory experience was made entirely immersive by visual projections of stills from the film, designed by Blanchard’s longtime collaborator, Andrew F. Scott, intended to look like artwork one would hang on any wall in their house. 

For the second act of the show, the audience was treated to powerful arias from Blanchard’s critically acclaimed opera, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” (the first opera by a Black composer to be staged at the Metropolitan Opera). Scenes from the production were also projected on screen.

This featured breathtaking vocal performances by African-American opera singers Adrienne Danrich and Will Liverman. They commanded the audience with their regal appearance and mind-blowing voices. Two Black classical singers in the same space? It was like seeing not one, but two unicorns… Unbelievable.  What a way to set the stage for the festival. 

As a follow-up, Severance hosted a Sunday fun day in the afternoon featuring author, poet, singer, and frontwoman of the Grammy Award-winning ensemble Tank and the Bangas, Tarriona “Tank” Ball. Dripped in mud cloth, she graced the stage and immediately got to work. Known for her impeccable writing, Tank’s poetry leaped off the page and filled Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Music Center, leaving an audience of clapping and chanting spectators on their feet by the performance’s end. 

Add to Tank’s list of attributes that she is New Orleans’ own. And her fellow New Orleanian, Blanchard, accompanied her on stage for an ode to The Big Easy that was more than easy on the ears. In the poem, she asks, “Am I still New Orleanian if I don’t suck the head off the crawfish, and lick the brown from the crack? Yuck! Am I still worthy of gold beads around my neck?” Well, if the audience had come equipped with a set, I’m sure they would’ve thrown them her way. All she had to flash was that genuine smile of hers and continue to read the words that stirred the souls of all those in attendance. 

Her love affair with New Orleans runs deeper than her performance with Blanchard, her upcoming Cain Park concert with Trombone Shorty, or frequent collaborations with rapper Dee-1. But she admits it took leaving the Crescent City for her to fully appreciate what she had always grown up with. After a two-year absence due to Hurricane Katrina, she’s not only back but also trying to convince her beau to move there. Now, it wasn’t said who he is or where he lives, but she did confirm it wasn’t Ohio. An adequate guess, nonetheless, given how much she’s being booked around the state these days.

“Just being at the open mic clubs in New Orleans, those are my favorite types of shows to do,” Tank said, speaking of how the city inspires her. “I love to do a big show with my band, love it. But nothing like the intimacy of these venues where they can hear nothing but my words and the piano behind me.” Other than Blanchard’s brief horn-blowing appearance on her New Orleans tribute, it was just Tank, her piano player, and her voice that captivated the room.

No stranger to Cleveland. This wasn’t her first time here, and surely isn’t her last. As aforementioned, she’ll be back with Trombone Shorty June 16 at Cain Park, but even sooner than that, you can catch her and the Bangas at the Ohio Black Expo this weekend in Columbus at Genoa Park as part of a 2-day festival of events welcoming all of Black Ohio.

Tank and the Bangas just released their fifth studio album, “The Last Balloon,” this past Friday. And according to take, “I’m getting rave reviews,” she said laughing. Speaking about the album and the band’s upcoming tour, she expressed how much fun both will be. “We were very intentional in making sure that at our live shows, we do a lot of crowd interaction and just make sure our fans have a lot of fun with us in-person and listening to the album. Although this is “the last balloon,” it doesn’t imply this is it for the band musically. “It is the end of an era, like literally a balloon era, not a music era,” she clarified. “Even the way the fans are describing it, they feel uplifted, like they are excited about what’s to come and not what has gone. And that’s exactly what I intended. People get it. And I’m excited about that because some people just met us when we did Tiny Desk, even though we’ve been around long before that, but there are so many more people just discovering who we are.”

If you happen not to be in the know, do yourself a favor and get real acquainted with Tank and the Bangas real fast. You won’t be disappointed. They’re a whole cup of tea, you’ll never get tired of clocking. In fact, they’ve been coined as my new favorite group. 

If you missed the first part of the festival, be sure to visit www.theclevelandorchestra.com for info on upcoming events and how to make sure you don’t miss the dopeness of the remainder of a Terence Blanchard-curated festival. Programming for the fourth annual Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival runs through May 24.