NEW ORLEANS -  ESSENCE wants you to grab your squad and plan your trip as it announces its exhilarating initial talent line-up for the 2018 ESSENCE Festival, taking place July 5-8 in New Orleans. The nightly concert series keeps the spotlight on women, featuring electrifying headline performances from Janet Jackson; Mary J. Blige; a headline set featuring Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, with special guests Snoop Dogg and many others in a special curation by The Roots; Xscape; Fantasia and Miguel. * Additional acts will be announced in the coming weeks.

NEW ORLEANS - We are thrilled to announce that Terence Blanchard has been chosen as one of the 2018 United States Artists USA Fellows. The awardees were selected from over 500 nominated applicants across all creative disciplines and each of the 45 artists and collectives will receive a $50,000 unrestricted award that recognizes their contributions, honors their creative accomplishments and supports their ongoing artistic and professional development.

Recipients hail from across the United States and are luminaries in their fields and rising stars, emerging voices and long-heralded experts. Above all, what unites them is the profound respect of their peers and the excellence of their work.

Said Blanchard upon hearing the news, "I share this honor with the many artists who have inspired me and supported my journey in creating art. Their encouragement has brought me to this tremendous honor."

Terence Blanchard is a top-tier jazz trumpeter who has gone on to enjoy a multifaceted career both in the jazz camp and beyond. He's not only a four-time Grammy Award winner, he's one of the most influential jazz musicians and film score masters of his generation--a member of a jazz legacy that has shaped the contours of modern jazz today. He's been recognized by US Artists, the MAPFund, and the NEA for his work in the jazz idiom and beyond.

As a film composer, Blanchard has more than 50 scores to his credit, most recently, Taylor Hackford's The Comedian. He's also received a Golden Globe nomination for Spike Lee's 25th Hour. Other film music written by Blanchard include Kevin Costner's Black or White; Gina Prince Bythewood's Love and Basketball; Oprah Winfrey's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tim Story's Barbershop and George Lucas' Red Tails.

Add to those achievements Blanchard's recent success composing for Broadway for the world premiere of playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis's The Motherf**ker With a Hat starring Chris Rock and Bobby Canavales and the Emily Mann-directed Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire; his first opera commissioned by Opera St. Louis/Jazz St. Louis' Champion (a poignant tale of welterweight boxing champion Emile Griffith with librettist Michael Cristofer); a speaking role as the musical voice of Louis the Alligator in the Disney-animated feature The Princess and the Frog; becoming the artistic director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's jazz series; and after serving as the artistic director of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz for a decade since 2000, being named in 2015 Artist in Residence at the Berklee College of Music in Boston where Blanchard works with students in the areas of artistic development, arranging and composition. He also participates in master classes around the world as well as local community outreach activities in his beloved hometown of New Orleans.

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