On Friday night, Terence Blanchard won Best of the Beat awards for Best Contemporary Jazz Artist and Contemporary Jazz Album, the latter for Choices. Tonight at Snug Harbor, he’ll receive the Academie Charles Cros’ Grand Prix Du Disque 2009 – one of France’s highest arts honors – for Choices as well, and the Academie’s Claude Carriere will be there to present the award in person.

Blanchard will perform shows at 8 and 10 p.m. with the Thelonious Monk Institute Ensemble, the second class in the program since the institute moved to New Orleans in 2007, and the first show – with the presentation – will be broadcast live on WWOZ.

On Sunday, Blanchard will also be up for a Grammy. He is nominated for Best Improvised Jazz Solo Grammy for “Dancin’ 4 Chicken” from Jeff “Tain” Watts’ album, Watts.

On Tuesday, January 26, WWOZ will broadcast the 8pm set performance by trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard and the Thelonious Monk Institute Jazz Ensemble live from Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro in New Orleans.

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, a nonprofit education organization, was founded in 1986 by the Monk family along with the late Maria Fisher, an opera singer and lifelong devotee of music. Its mission is to offer the world’s most promising young musicians college level training by America’s jazz masters and to present public school-based jazz education programs for young people around the world. All of these programs are offered free of charge to the students and schools.

Three-time GRAMMY Award-winning composer and world-renowned trumpet player Terence Blanchard has established himself as one of the most influential jazz musicians and film score masters of his generation.

Currently signed to Blue Note Records, Terence belongs to a jazz legacy that has shaped the contours of modern jazz today, stretching back to 1939 and including formative albums by one of Blanchard’s mentors, the legendary drummer and bandleader Art Blakey.