Wynton Marsalis - Blues Symphony (Cristian Măcelaru)

Information

Composer: Wynton Marsalis

1. Movement I: Born in Hope
2. Movement II: Swimming in Sorrow
3. Movement III: Reconstruction Rag
4. Movement IV: Southwestern Shakedown
5. Movement V: Big City Breaks
6. Movement VI: Danzón y Mambo, Choro y Samba
7. Movement VII: Dialog in Democracy

Philadelphia Orchestra

Cristian Măcelaru, conductor

Date: 2021

Label: Jazz at Lincoln Center

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Review

‘The more profound the pain, the deeper the groove,’ writes Wynton Marsalis in the foreword to his Second Symphony, an exploration of the 12-bar blues through the lens of symphonic music. Aspects of the Blues Symphony are deliberately pastiche: each of the seven movements depict styles within the African-American vernacular including ragtime, boogie-woogie and spirituals. The work draws on his experience playing in marching bands, jazz groups and classical ensembles to create a genre-breaking style like a 21st-century Gershwin.

The first movement, ‘Born in Hope’, opens with a catchy snare drum and piccolo duet that alludes to the solo in John Philip Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever. The upper melodies quickly dissolve into abstraction – but the 12-bar chord structure remains a constant presence. Later, there are nods towards historic classical-jazz pieces – some are subtle; for example, ‘Reconstruction Rag’ is written in D flat, the original key of Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. The whirring brass and clarinet glissandos in ‘Swimming in Sorrow’ are more explicitly evocative of Rhapsody in Blue.

Blues Symphony was originally written for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2009. This recording by the Philadelphia Orchestra at a 2019 concert at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, benefits from the energy and propulsion of a live performance. Blues Symphony may lack the sheer originality of, say, Marsalis’s 2020 piece The Ever Fonky Lowdown, but it is a fitting tribute to Bernstein, Joplin, James P Johnson and all those who first fused jazz and classical music.

-- Claire Jackson, BBC Music Magazine

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Wynton Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter, composer, teacher, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He studied music at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and the Juilliard School. Marsalis has promoted classical and jazz music, often to young audiences, and has established himself as a lecturer and musical ambassador, speaking and performing on six continents. He has won nine Grammy Awards, and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize. He is the only musician to win a Grammy in both jazz and classical during the same year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wynton_Marsalis

https://wyntonmarsalis.org/

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Cristian Măcelaru (born 15 March 1980) is a Romanian conductor. Graduating from the University of Miami in 2003, he became the youngest concertmaster ever of the Miami Symphony Orchestra. Măcelaru further continued his music studies at Rice University, where he developed his interest in conducting. Măcelaru was assistant conductor, associate conductor, then conductor-in-residence of The Philadelphia Orchestra from 2011 to 2017. He has been chief conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne since 2019, and music director of the Orchestre National de France since 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristian_Măcelaru

https://macelaru.com/

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