Wynton Marsalis’s Blues Symphony Album receives praise from the Financial Times

Wynton Marsalis with conductor Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2010 at the World Premiere of "Blues Symphony" (Photo credit: Philip McCollum)

Wynton Marsalis’s Blues Symphony is a grand tour of American history
By Richard Fairman
The Financial Times
July 1, 2021

Do not believe the simple title, “Blues Symphony”. Wynton Marsalis’s Symphony No. 2, which had its premiere in 2010, is nothing less than a grand tour of American history through music, like the soundtrack to an upbeat television documentary series.

Ambition has never been lacking in Marsalis’s all-embracing career. A jazz trumpeter first and foremost, he was classically trained and is the only person to have won a Grammy award in jazz and classical in the same year.

Among his recent compositions in classical forms, the Violin Concerto stands out for its exhausting profusion of ideas. This earlier symphony works better, mainly because it spreads over such a wide canvas (an hour long) that there is ample time for each passage to run its course.

Each of the seven movements, based on the 12-bar blues, focuses on a specific historical period of American culture. The symphony opens with a revolutionary rally of fife and drums. There is a voyage of slaves over the ocean based on a spiritual with watery undercurrent. New York is pictured in concrete blocks of sound (a rival to Varèse) and a ragtime movement blazes to a rousing finish, getting cheers from the live audience. The music is big, bold and colorful.

This first recording by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Cristian Măcelaru is a digital-only release.

‘Wynton Marsalis: “Blues” Symphony (Symphony No. 2)’ is released by Blue Engine Records.

Read the full review here.