Longtime musician Harold Blanchard from Harlem dies at 80
In 2003, New Smyrna Beach pianist Harold Blanchard had finished performing at the Hampton Jazz Festival in Virginia, where he and his band had shared the bill with Earth, Wind and Fire; George Benson; Gladys Knight; the Isley Brothers; Anita Baker; Michael McDonald and sax player David Sanborn.
Blanchard noticed a departing bus suddenly stop, and a man got off. It was Sanborn.
Sanborn “walked up and I said ‘Man, I just have to congratulate you,’ ” Blanchard recalled in an interview with The News-Journal. “And he said, ‘No, I want to congratulate you on the job you guys did.’ Well, I was blown away … He’s a giant. For him to express appreciation for what we did meant a lot to me.”
Blanchard, a Harlem native who moved to New Smyrna Beach in 1977, died Sunday at Hospice of Volusia/Flagler in Edgewater following a heart attack and stroke. He was 80.
“This small beach town just lost a giant in jazz,” said area music promoter Marc Monteson, who booked Blanchard annually for the New Smyrna Beach Jazz Festival. “He was a wonderful person, very outgoing and warm and always a smile on his face. His music was indescribable. It was just fabulous what he could do on piano.”
Monteson marveled that Blanchard “chose to live in our tiny little beach town instead of New York City or any other jazz-influenced city.”
Growing up in Harlem, Blanchard listened to the Bach and Chopin records his musician father would play at home, before the senior Blanchard left to play clarinet and sax at the Cotton Club. Young Blanchard began studying classical piano at age 7, made his classical concert debut at 13, and later studied music at Juilliard.
After moving to New Smyrna Beach in 1977, Blanchard was contacted by flutist Hubert Laws, a friend he had first met in 1961 while living in the Bahamas. Laws wanted to challenge himself in both the classical and jazz arenas, and asked Blanchard to write a composition that combined the two. The result was “New Earth Sonata, ” recorded and released on the CBS Masterworks/Columbia label in 1985 with a lineup featuring Blanchard, Laws, keyboardist Chick Corea, conductor Quincy Jones and others.
After moving here, Blanchard became a fixture on the local music scene, performing frequently at Clancy’s Cantina in New Smyrna Beach, Angell & Phelps Cafe in Daytona Beach and other venues. He also released several independent albums, taught piano privately and since 1988 taught as an adjunct professor at Stetson University in Deland, where his jazz improvisation course was required for music majors.
Blanchard was a “brilliant musician,” said Al Smith, an area music/events promoter and the former owner of Angell & Phelps Cafe. “He did some jazz fusion stuff that was pretty cutting edge at the time. But probably his biggest legacy is that of a teacher.”
Blanchard’s performances at the cafe would invariably draw “two — or 10 — former students” who would “come out and just marvel” at him,” Smith said.
Blanchard is survived by his wife of 53 years, Gladys, and his daughter, Gilda Siimes, and son-in-law, Timo Siimes, who are missionaries in Nicaragua. Baldwin Brothers Cremation Society is in charge. Plans for a public memorial service will be announced, Gilda Siimes said.
By RICK DE YAMPERT, Entertainment writer