One of the currently most influential jazz musicians and teachers wins JGU's highest endowed teaching award

The 2025 Gutenberg Teaching Award has been conferred on American Terence Blanchard, who is among the world's most authoritative jazz musicians and teachers. He will be visiting Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in the coming week to accept the award and to participate in various events. The Gutenberg Teaching Award, worth EUR 10,000, is the highest endowed teaching award bestowed by JGU. It is presented every two years to notable individuals who are not members of the university by the Gutenberg Teaching Council (GTC), an institution established to promote teaching at JGU. "Terence Blanchard is receiving the Gutenberg Teaching Award in recognition of his outstanding work as a musician, composer and, specifically, as a teacher and mentor," points out Prof. Stefan Müller-Stach, Vice President for Research and Academic Careers, who will be presenting the award to Blanchard. "He has already won seven Grammys and has been twice nominated for an Oscar for best original film score. We are delighted that he will be our guest."

Terence Blanchard was born in New Orleans in 1962 and already learned to play piano and trumpet as a child. At the age of 15, he was accepted by the eminent New Orleans Center of Creative Arts to study composition. He was a member of drummer Art Blakey's The Jazz Messengers from 1982 to 1986 and has since been considered to be among the world's leading jazz trumpeters. He subsequently began to compose music for films and operas. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his scores for the films BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020), which were directed by Spike Lee. He has released more than 20 music albums. "In addition, Terence Blanchard is also one of the most influential teachers of jazz of our time," adds the Director of the GTC, Prof. Andrej Gill. "Among other things, he was Artistic Director at the then Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Washington (now the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz) and from 2023 became Executive Artistic Director of the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco. He is celebrated for his promotion of an experimental and egalitarian teaching environment. His work represents a prime example of what can be achieved by a combination of artistic and educational excellence."

Concert and film screening with Terence Blanchard at JGU

Next Wednesday, there will be the opportunity to be present during a masterclass at the Mainz School of Music given by Terence Blanchard. On the following Thursday, there will be the presentation ceremony for the Gutenberg Teaching Award and Terence Blanchard will be invited to sign the university's Golden Book. He will then give a concert together with the Gutenberg Jazz Collective led by Prof. Sebastian Sternal. The concert is a facet of the Jazz Campus Mainz excellence program and will be staged in cooperation with the Villa Musica foundation of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate. Then, on the Friday, Terence Blanchard will be discussing the cultural and political aspects of the movie BlacKkKLansman and also more general topics, such as film scores, civil rights and the current cultural environment in the USA, with students and teaching staff of JGU.

The Gutenberg Teaching Council: a constituent part of the innovative Mainz model of university governance

Together with the Gutenberg Research College (GRC) and the Gutenberg Council for Academic Careers (GCC), the Gutenberg Teaching Council is at the heart of the innovative Mainz model of university governance that involves the participation of outstanding academics. Its executive committee consists of teaching staff at JGU who have distinguished themselves by their exceptional work together with students. It contributes to the strategic development of learning and teaching at JGU by advising the Executive University Board. In addition, the GTC has various financial instruments at its disposal and contributes in the form of white papers and events to the dialogue across disciplines and faculties. The GTC has been presenting the Gutenberg Teaching Award to eminent individuals who have distinguished themselves in the field of teaching since 2014. Prior to Terence Blanchard, former winners of the award include Prof. Dr. h.c. John Hattie, the New Zealand-born leading researcher in the field of education, the Botswana theologian and HIV/AIDS commissioner to the World Council of Churches, Prof. Musa Dube, the American physicist and Nobel laureate Prof. Carl Wieman and also the Japanese conductor and founder of the Bach Collegium Japan, Prof. Masaaki Suzuki.