When Terence Blanchard undertook the music score for Spike Lee's 2006 HBO special When the Levees Broke, he was no stranger to the music-for-movies world. He had previously done considerable such work for Spike Lee and other directors, beginning with his orchestration for Lee's Jungle Fever in 1991. From then to 2007, he amassed a series of forty-one music scores for film, thirteen of them for Spike Lee.

Blanchard Goes Back to Jazz Roots

But Blanchard's roots are in jazz, so it seemed natural that this New Orleans native should follow that Katrina score a year later with his musical requiem, A Tale of God's Will. This blend of movie music (four of the tunes had been part of the movie special score) and new original tunes movingly traces the approaching storm, its violence, and the resulting tragedy.

The album features thirteen pieces, four of them part of the original movie score ("Levees," "Wading Through," "The Water," and "Funeral Dirge"). Blanchard's quintet includes himself on trumpet, Aaron Parks (later Fabian Almazan) on piano, Brice Winston on tenor sax, Derrick Hodge on bass, and Kendrick Scott on drums. In addition, there was a forty-piece orchestra for the album cut.