Detroit Symphony Orchestra to Release Wynton Marsalis's BLUES SYMPHONY on PENTATONE
The recording will be released on March 14.
On Friday, March 14, 2025, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Jader Bignamini release a new recording of Pulitzer Prize and GRAMMY-winning trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Wynton Marsalis's epic Blues Symphony (2009) on PENTATONE.
The seven-movement symphony was over a decade in the making and is now regarded as one of Marsalis's most innovative and expansive compositions, representing the scope of America's musical heritage. Movement V. "Big City Breaks" is now available as an Instant Gratification Track and Movement I. "Born in Hope" will be released on February 21, 2025.
Marsalis shares, "The Blues Symphony is a seven-movement work that gives a symphonic identity to the form and feeling of the blues. It utilizes regional and stylistic particulars of the idiom's language and form to convey the basic point of view of the blues as music: 'Life hands you hard times.' When you cry, holler, and shout to release those hard times; when you tease, cajole, and play to diminish them; and when you dance and find a common community through groove, better times will be found. The more profound the pain, the deeper the groove."
He continues, "I believe there is an organic and real connection between all Western orchestra traditions regardless of instrumentation, and that the symphonic orchestra can and will traditions regardless of instrumentation, and that the symphonic orchestra can and will swing, play the blues, feature melodic improvisation, and execute the more virtuosic aspects of jazz and American vernacular music with absolute authenticity."
Jader Bignamini, marking his debut commercial recording and first as Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, America's fourth-oldest, adds, "This dynamic and challenging work captures the breadth of American music and can be appreciated from both the orchestral and jazz worlds. I believe it brings together the two souls of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and speaks to the musical legacy of the city of Detroit and our home, Orchestra Hall."
In conjunction with the release of Blues Symphony, the DSO is also pressing a limited vinyl edition of the work through Detroit's Third Man Records. This non-commercial release will feature a cover by Detroit artist Judy Bowman commissioned by the DSO and be available exclusively to supporters of the orchestra's new Gold Record Collective, which will raise funds to support future recording projects and record releases by the DSO. For more information, visit dso.org/grc.
Blues Symphony is intended to further the legacy of Gershwin, James P. Johnson, Bernstein, John Lewis, and others who were determined to infuse the innovations of jazz into the vocabulary of the symphonic orchestra. The work was commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2009 and received its New York premiere by the American Composers Orchestra in 2015.
The first movement "Born in Hope" is an evocation of the American Revolution and the birth of the possibility of the blues. Many different voices slowly differentiate themselves into an identifiable melodic theme based on "Yankee Doodle Dandy" to exemplify E Pluribus Unum - from many, one - ending in a ragtime march.
The symphony continues with movement two, "Swimming in Sorrow," influenced by the Afro-American parlor music of the 19th century, gospel and church music, New Orleans funeral marches, and swing violin stylings of masters like Claude Williams and Stéphane Grappelli, concluding with a repeated blues cry on the English horn above a sustained trumpet note, evoking Dvorak's 9th Symphony "From the New World."
The third movement "Reconstruction Rag" begins in the world of circus waltzes and parlor music - New Orleans circa 1890 - infused with the sound of a train, symbolizing freedom. Once the train pulls into the station, a long coda based on Jelly Roll Morton's King Porter Stomp ultimately stomps to a halt with a New Orleans-cymbal-choke tag.
The fourth movement "Southwestern Shakedown" begins with the free call and response of the Devotional opening of the Afro-American Baptist Church, later turning into a Saturday night straight-up dance shuffle, the most flexible and enduring American rhythm. Marsalis describes it as "our version of an African 6/8 clave that all countries in the Americas have interpreted in their own way."
Movement five, "Big City Breaks," invokes the sonic landscape of Manhattan using breaks and stop-time effects inspired by percussion techniques from the bebop drums of Max Roach, to the claves of Latin jazz, to the brass and percussion of Third Stream jazz. Traffic sounds and the everyday fadeout of 5 o'clock eases into a softer, angelic side of the city... but the chanting brass and repeating bass tell us: it's still the asphalt jungle.
"Danzon y Mambo, Choro y Samba," movement six, begins with the feel of New Orleans/Cuban concert music and a male-female dialogue between violin and cello. Marsalis explains, "An interlude of woodwinds leads into a Charanga-inflected flute solo in honor of Alberto Soccaras from Cuba who played the first jazz flute solo in 1927. Mr. Soccaras was an ear training teacher of mine in 1979-80, and I had no idea who he was."
The symphony closes with "Dialogue In Democracy," the only piece of music Marsalis has ever written on the trumpet. He recorded himself playing a typical improvisation on a very fast tempo blues form and spread it out across the bottom and top of the orchestra. The composer shares, "The lines are obtuse, chromatic and polyrhythmic, yet still the blues. It is a dialogue between the low and high voices that ends up in a shouting then screaming match. After reaching the climactic point, which serves also as the resolution of the argument, we reprise a patchwork quilt of moments from the preceding dialogue alternating between high and low voices. It is business as usual. We have to communicate with one another. The orchestra ascends to a final very brief break, and with one final grand statement of the very first theme, the Blues Symphony is done."
The DSO's distinguished history of recordings-many led by its renowned music directors-spans nearly a century, beginning with the orchestra's first 78 rpm singles with Ossip Gabrilowitsch released on the Victrola label in 1928. A steady recording output has continued since then, with highlights including more than 20 releases with Paul Paray for Mercury's Living Presence series, and 27 under the baton of Neeme Järvi, mostly on the Chandos label. In the 1970s, the DSO took part in the historic Black Composers Series for Columbia Records led by its then-Associate Conductor Paul Freeman and later made several acclaimed recordings with Antal Doráti for the Decca label. More recently, under the direction of Leonard Slatkin, the DSO recorded music by Rachmaninoff, Copland, and John Williams for the Naxos label, earning its first GRAMMY nomination in 2017 for Copland's Third Symphony / Three Latin American Sketches.
Marsalis: Blues Symphony Tracklist
Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961) - Blues Symphony (2009)
1. I. Born in Hope [7:41]
2. II. Swimming in Sorrow [13:09]
3. III. Reconstruction Rag [10:04]
4. IV. Southwestern Shakedown [8:08]
5. V. Big City Breaks [4:29]
6. VI. Danzon y Mambo, Choro y Samba [11:23]
7. VII. Dialogue In Democracy [6:32]
TT: 01:01:26
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Jader Bignamini, Conductor
Executive Producer: Erik Rönmark (Detroit Symphony Orchestra) & Sean Hickey (PENTATONE)
Audio Recording & Post-Production: Soundmirror, Boston
Recording Producer: Blanton Alspaugh (Soundmirror)
Recording Engineer, Mixing & Mastering: Mark Donahue (Soundmirror)
Original Cover Photography: Paradise Marquee, photographer unknown, DSO Archives
Cover Design: Marjolein Coenrady
Photo of Jader Bignamini: Justin Milhouse
Product Management & Design: Karolina Szymanik
PTC 5187232
Recorded between December 1-3, 2023, in Orchestra Hall in Detroit, MI.
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