Lionel Loueke Trio // Terence Blanchard Quintet & Dt. Filmorchester Babelsberg

Lionel Loueke Trio

Loueke’s story begins in Benin, a small country in West Africa, where he spent a lot of time listening to his older brother playing the guitar. Eventually when Loueke was 17 years old, his brother let him borrow this guitar, and he quickly realized that he had a great facility for the instrument.

In 1994, Loueke moved to Paris to pursue Jazz studies, moving on to Berklee in Boston and later was admitted to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles along with Biolcati and Nemeth. Here he had the opportunity to study and perform with some of the finest jazz musicians in the world, including three legends that would nurture Loueke’s burgeoning talent and become his greatest mentors: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Terence Blanchard.

Before even graduating from the Monk Institute, Loueke began touring in Blanchard’s sextet, a highly-creative band that recorded two albums for Blue Note (Bounce and Flow) and allowed Loueke to begin expressing his own voice as a soloist and composer. Since leaving Blanchard’s band he has been hired by Hancock and become a prominent member of the pianist’s current quartet, touring extensively and recording on Hancock’s Grammy-nominated album, River: The Joni Letters as well as recording and performing in his own right.

Terence Blanchard Quintet + Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg
‘A Tale of God’s Will’ (A Requiem for Katrina)

The crucible of catastrophe impels creative expression. Since the turn of the century, this has taken shape in manifold ways, from artistic responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the war in Iraq to the pummeling of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It is this latter calamity that informs Crescent City native son Terence Blanchard’s impassioned song cycle, A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina). An important jumpstart for this recording was director Spike Lee’s (Mo’ Better Blues, German premiere at JazzFest Berlin ’09) decision to document the aftermath of Katrina on film, in what turned out to be the four-hour HBO documentary, When the Levees Broke.

Blanchard’s Quintet and Potsdam’s own Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg make a rare and perfect match – bringing the opus to life as an audible piece of cinemascope.