The title of the opening concert of the Edinburgh International Festival is also the thesis statement for this year’s entire EIF programme. All Rise is intended to be a celebration of integration, pluralism and collective acceptance, ‘togetherness and ascendance’, at a time when such notions could hardly be less in vogue.
It takes a big work to live up to the billing. Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis’s 12-part symphony, which premièred in New York in 1999, certainly doesn’t lack scale or ambition. For this mammoth hybrid composition for jazz ensemble, symphony orchestra and choir, Marsalis and his Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra were joined at the Usher Hall by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers. With more than 200 performers on stage under the baton of James Gaffigan, this was a monumental endeavour designed for maximum impact.
The man himself was tucked away among the body of the JLCO, emphasising the intrinsically collegiate nature of the symphony, both musically and thematically. ‘It’s my piece,’ he recently stated, ‘but it’s not my show.’ In the stalls, we could see the snout of his trumpet rearing up for a couple of blazing solos in the second set, but he was otherwise just one of the masses.
