Wynton Marsalis made his name as a classical trumpet virtuoso with a recording of the Joseph Haydn, Johann Hummel and Leopold Mozart trumpet concertos. That disc won a Grammy in 1984, along with another of Marsalis’ albums, the jazz smash Think of One. Four decades later he has written a Trumpet Concerto of his own, drawing on both classical and jazz idioms, along with just about everything in between.
This sprawling, six-movement monster is a sort of trumpet encyclopedia. Over 35 minutes Marsalis presents various snapshots of the instrument, tracing its evolution and paying flamboyant tribute to some of its most cherished performers. This rearview mirror approach was conceived jointly with Cleveland Orchestra Principal Trumpet Michael Sachs, for whom the Concerto was written: ‘We started talking about form and movements and ended up talking for an hour about great trumpet players we’ve admired and loved,’ Marsalis recalls. ‘We went through person after person, and I think all of that is in the Concerto.’
Marsalis likes to joke that a trumpet sounded at the beginning of the world and will sound at its end too. So it does in this Concerto. But, with typical Marsalian cheek, it is not the archangel Gabriel that sets things off – but a trumpeting elephant. This first-movement ‘March’ nods to the Classical concertos that brought Marsalis such renown, with its bright fanfares, lyrical counter melody and trumpet-timpani partnership. We also hear the first hints of what Marsalis calls ‘magical elements’: alternate fingerings, growls and flutters that spice up the trumpet’s palette and which are developed throughout the piece.
In the second movement, ‘Ballad’, the trumpet switches partners, leading the oboe in a doo-wop duet. Here Marsalis embraces the ‘unabashed romantic style of instrumental singing gifted to the world by Louis Armstrong’, taking the first movement countermelody and turning it up to maximum croon. But the mood shifts abruptly with ‘Mexican Son’, Marsalis’ ode to the Afro-Hispanic diaspora. Highlighting the ‘solitary, razor-sharp attack of the Spanish-inflected trumpet’, he reimagines the opening ‘March’ in a set of Spanish-inflected variations. A Spanish Bolero then sees the trumpet duel with a bassoon, before shuffling to a close in a 5/4-time Habanera.
The intellectual heart of the work, ‘Blues’, riffs on the idea of call-andresponse to illustrate the tension within that genre between sacred and secular: as trombones and horns preach a po-faced sermon, the trumpet fidgets and jokes in the pews. Both grow in resolve before erupting into a lustrous brass chorale. A brief waltz, inspired by the dazzling trumpetry of Frenchmen Maurice André and Pierre Thibaud, then whisks us to the finale. Here, to the groove of an Eastern European two-step, Marsalis brings together themes from the five preceding movements in a manic jamboree; an army of orchestral percussion clatters while the soloist, wallowing in the full panoply of Marsalis’ ‘magical’ (or ‘Harlequin’) tricks, dances majestically atop the mayhem. At last, our elephant – who else? – brings the work to a close with a solitary fanfare.
Marsalis is a collaborator as much as he is a composer, and has clearly relished the opportunity to learn about his instrument while working on this Concerto: ‘[Sachs] has a very different body of knowledge and set of skills to the ones that I have,’ he admits, and plenty of the music therefore sits outside the composer’s usual fare. But the collaborative process goes both ways, and by tapping the limits of his own trumpet virtuosity, Marsalis wills the soloist to convey ‘the broad depth of feeling and the joy of defying technical limitations that defines our legacy as trumpeters’. And, being a jazzer, he has also left plenty of room in the score for spontaneity, thus allowing tonight’s soloist, Alison Balsom, to stomp her own mark on this emphatic, elephantic joyride.
Wynton Marsalis
‘I’ve never really believed in segregating music into different areas,’ Wynton Marsalis has said. ‘We are all part of a continuum.’ His compositional output suggests as much, embracing all manner of styles, from sweeping Americana to hard-edged modernism, bebop to Louisiana blues. As a performer, he is as likely to be found collaborating with Pakistan’s Sachal Jazz Ensemble as he is appearing as the soloist in Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto. His nine Grammy awards have come in the classical, jazz and spoken word categories.
Marsalis was born in New Orleans to a family of musicians. He trained at Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center (the youngest musician ever to be admitted) before attending New York’s Juilliard School, during which time he joined Art Blakey’s renowned band the Jazz Messengers. After assembling his own group in 1981, Marsalis undertook a relentless touring schedule that has shown little sign of slowing: ongoing dates with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which he directs, were punctuated in 2023 by concerts in Europe with his own Septet and Quartet.
Following in the footsteps of his hero Duke Ellington, one of the great bandleader-composers, Marsalis has also stretched himself in a series of bold and colourful concert works that owe in their eclecticism as much to Charles Ives as the Duke. These include his 1994 jazz oratorio Blood on the Fields – the first work by a jazz artist to win a Pulitzer Prize – along with four symphonies (All Rise, Blues, Swing and The Jungle), and 2013–15’s Violin Concerto, written for Nicola Benedetti and heard in all its rambunctious glory in 2022 at the BBC Proms.
Education outreach fills what little time Marsalis has left in his calendar. Whether that’s involvement in the annual ‘Essentially Ellington’ programme for US youth bands, or the premiere this year of his piece Back to Basics with the SF Jazz High School All-Stars Orchestra.
Read the full programme note and profile on the London Symphony Orchestra website