Name: Presenting Series: Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones: In Concert”
Start: 2026-02-28T19:30:00-05:00
Location: 100 Performing Arts Ctr, Notre Dame, IN, United States, Indiana 46556

$Presenting Series: Terence Blanchard\u2019s \u201cFire Shut Up in My Bones: In Concert\u201d$

When: Saturday, February 28, 2026, at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Leighton Concert Hall
A Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who has scored all 17 of Spike Lee's films, the jazz icon and trumpeter Terence Blanchard brings his groundbreaking opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones to life in an approachable concert format. Video projections by Andrew F. Scott enhance this unstaged presentation, giving context for Blanchard's vision and the emotional intensity of the music. Blanchard, with The E-Collective, double-Grammy-winning Turtle Island Quartet, and two vocalists, is touring a masterpiece, his "opera in jazz" to tell an intensely human story of pain, healing, and self-discovery.
Based on the memoir by New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones traces a young man's journey through trauma and identity in the American South. Blanchard's exquisite score is rooted in Black musical traditions but was entirely new to the opera stage. In this concert version, the music takes center stage—raw, intimate, and unforgettable. One of the most important new works in American opera is unmissable.
Knowing opera isn't required to be moved by this performance. At the same time, this event is a testimony that opera and classical music are for everyone. Be drawn to the incredible jazz artists performing, a story of someone who will not be moved, and live music that challenges the norm. Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a revolution in art, and it's happening here in South Bend.
*Made possible by the Jill A. Fischer Endowment for Excellence in Opera and the Robert M. and Ricki Conway Endowment for Excellence for the Performing Arts.