EIF Review: Opening Concert: All Rise

This year’s Edinburgh International Festival kicked off with a rousing performance of Wynton Marsalis’ epic All Rise jazz symphony, from which the festival also takes its overall theme. So writes Lindsay McMurdo for theQR.co.uk…

The Usher Hall stage can rarely have hosted more performers at the same time, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra joined by Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (including the composer himself), the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, and the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers — two hundred musicians in total under the animated direction of conductor James Gaffigan.

It was an epic production on all levels. Written in 1999, All Rise’s 12 movements variously feature just about every American musical form, with the blues at its heart. There is swing, bebop, hoedown, New Orleans ragtime, “classical” film score, and more in its rich mix, often juxtaposed within movements as passages switch between the orchestra and the jazz band. Echoes everywhere of Copland, Basie, Ellington, Parker, and even Coltrane.

“This year’s Edinburgh International Festival kicked off with a rousing performance of Wynton Marsalis’ epic All Rise jazz symphony…”

The musicianship throughout was terrific. The RSNO sounded just a little stiff to start with (the music perhaps a little out of its comfort zone) but seemed to relax as the piece unfolded. And the brass section was clearly having a ball with Marsalis’ boisterous rhythms and occasional blaring dissonance.

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World-Class Virtuosity and Choral Joy

The five front-line soloists from the JLCO are all world-class players, with each of them performing on at least three different instruments. Those passages where they were allowed to blow freely were among the evening’s many highlights, not least in the fifth movement when Marsalis himself loosed a spectacular blizzard of improvisation, provoking tumultuous applause.

The text for the choral passages of All Rise is intended “to trace a journey from birth through pain and sacrifice to maturity and joy”. As sung by the Festival Chorus and the Ferdinand Singers, the emphasis was very much on the joy, especially in the final movement where their repeated urging of “All Rise” over the massed orchestration proved near-overwhelming. The intensity of the finale was quite something to hear and behold.

Final credit must go to conductor James Gaffigan, who danced and swayed his way through the complex score with deceptive ease while still appearing to enjoy himself thoroughly.

At the end, the audience, appropriately enough, all rose. After an evening of such spectacle, musical excellence, and sheer fun, it was the only possible response.