A Diplomatic Encounter Between Jazz and Classical

[ASUmusicMAN]

A Diplomatic Encounter Between Jazz and Classical

By ANNE MIDGETTE

Published: July 13, 2004

Picture the familiar photographs of presidential encounters with foreign leaders: the handshake, the fixed smiles, the platitudes. There's a certain protocol that kicks in when two cultures are forcibly brought together. But what's said at such meetings isn't really the point of the exercise; at best, you get a few stilted words in the other's language. The real meat of the encounter, if there is any, is hidden behind closed doors, away from the flashing cameras.

Cameras certainly flashed on Friday night at the opening of Tanglewood, and two cultures came together in a piece that, like a state meeting, was a wonderful political gesture: Wynton Marsalis's "All Rise," written for combined jazz and classical orchestras, which had its premiere at the New York Philharmonic in 1999. It's great when an orchestra commissions an evening-length work, rather than a 10-minute one, from a living composer. It's great when the people who first championed the piece continue to support and perform it after its premiere (Kurt Masur, the commissioning conductor, led the Boston Symphony and Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestras). And it's great to see symphony orchestras trying to reach out and open themselves up to other traditions.

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