Marsalis brings 'All Rise' to Edinburgh festival opener
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- Edinburgh International Festival opens with Marsalis's 'All Rise' at Usher Hall, uniting the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and massed choirs — more than 200 performers total — in a work conceived as a celebration of integration.
- Wynton Marsalis, 64, has announced he will step back from his executive leadership role at Jazz at Lincoln Center after nearly four decades, citing a roster of successors including bassist Carlos Henriquez, alto saxophonist Sherman Irby and tenor saxophonist Dan Block.
- Marsalis married Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti — who is also director of the Edinburgh festival — and the couple welcomed daughter Elise in May 2024; Benedetti is 26 years Marsalis's junior and the relationship is largely long-distance for now.
- 'All Rise', first performed in 1999 by the New York Philharmonic under the late Kurt Masur, draws on American marches, blues, dance rhythms and spirituals across 12 movements; Marsalis credits collaborators including orchestrator James Oliverio and bassoonist Milan Turković rather than calling it a solo creation.
- Marsalis has written a violin concerto for Benedetti, who after one run-through sent him a list of roughly 40 detailed note-level edits — prompting him to describe the piece's intended intersections between jazz and symphonic music rather than 'fusion.'
Why it matters: Edinburgh's choice of a work originally conceived as a civic celebration of integration — premiered by Kurt Masur's New York Philharmonic — as its opening statement is pointed at a moment when the idea of common culture 'has begun to look quaint,' per the piece. Marsalis's simultaneous step back after nearly 40 years running Lincoln Center's jazz program marks a generational handover at the US's pre-eminent jazz institution, with Henriquez, Irby and Block named as possible successors.
