Halfway through song from his new tribute album, The Billie Holiday Songbook, trumpeter Terence Blanchard abruptly shifts the mood from brokenhearted to defiant. Reflecting the emotions of a jilted lover, he blows swirling, gathering clouds of sound. Then, suddenly piercing them with a barrage of sharp notes, he dashes off a few steeply ascending riffs, bending his notes until they cry and yowl. Throughout the album, on solo after solo (Strange Fruit, In My Solitude), Blanchard's compact, mournful-sounding melodies evoke the desperation and broken dreams that tortured Holiday, who died at 44 in 1959 of drugs and drink.
Few can match...