Turn It Up, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

There’s no question that motion pictures can be enhanced by the proper music. Think of the da-dum, da-dum, da-dum John Williams gave us in Jaws, or the shrieking violins that accompanied the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. But what about pieces of orchestral music that serve not as an accent, but as accompaniment to the action onscreen? And what about music from crime films? I thought about this recently as I pulled Terence Blanchard’s Jazz in Film CD off the shelf for the first time in far too long.

Blanchard was born in New Orleans in 1962, and paid his musical dues playing trumpet with the Art Blakey Jazz Messengers. Unfortunately for Blanchard, that nearly damns him to obscurity, as Wynton Marsalis has nearly an identical pedigree. Blanchard started setting himself apart by getting involved in film music, first as a featured musician on films like Do the Right Thing, eventually progressing to composing scores such as one for Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. Blanchard’s association with Lee continues to the present day, with the 2006 heist-gone-awry film Inside Man.

In 1999, Blanchard released Jazz in Film, which featured his interpretations of classic film scores, three of them from crime films--Anatomy of a Murder, Clockers, and Chinatown.

Anatomy of a Murder, the 1959 Otto Preminger film, featured music by Duke Ellington. The story is the quintessential courtroom drama, and Ellington gave it an urban feel with the driving beat of his score. Blanchard’s take starts with the trombone of Steve Turre, best known to Saturday Night Live fans as the guy who occasionally plays conch shells. The music bustles with activity, and you can almost hear someone say that there are eight million stories in the naked city. It jumbles, it cartwheels, and it propels the listener forward--just like a crime film should.

Blanchard takes his score for Clockers (directed by Lee and based on the Richard Price novel) out for a second spin. Kenny Kirkland sets the stage with ominous left-hand bass chords, followed by Blanchard and tenor sax great Joe Henderson in near unison duet. The restlessness of the characters comes through as Henderson takes over, wailing plaintively and sounding as though he’s sitting on the stoop of a Brooklyn townhouse. Blanchard returns periodically for musical conversations with Henderson. Two friends looking for something to do.

The crown of this CD, though, is the treatment Blanchard gives to Jerry Goldsmith’s main theme from Chinatown. Kirkland once again opens with delicate keyboard work, letting us know the fragility of the story that’s about to unfold. (Kirkland, a ferociously talented musician who worked with band leaders as diverse as Marsalis and Sting, died soon after completing his work on this CD, and it is dedicated to his memory). Blanchard’s soft trumpet fades in and manages to both cry and soar. You hear it all--the hopeless situation of Evelyn Mulwray, the grinning ghoul that is Noah Cross, and the great pawn J.J. Gittes, whose good intentions are not only futile, they’re destructive.

There are other fine cuts on this CD from films as diverse as Taxi Driver, A Streetcar Named Desire, and another Ellington selection from the uncompleted Degas’ Racing World. It’s a marvelous disk, perfect for a summer night with stars in the background and wine in the foreground.