The cover art boasts a shot of the marquee of the Paradise Theatre that stands in what was once the heart of the African American community in Detroit. Built in 1941, it is now home of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Wynton Marsalis lists some of the great jazz artists and composers who performed there, though given the context, one absentee who slipped through his net is WC Handy (1873-1958), who was responsible for the blues in published form in such compositions as his Saint Louis Blues (1914).

Marsalis’s Blues Symphony is perhaps better viewed as an expansive tableau of American popular culture than as a symphony (the form a shade loose, the ideas too prolix for such nomenclature). Having got that off my chest, there is so much to admire here, a generosity of spirit in each of the seven movements that elevates Blues Symphony for consideration as a landmark in the composer’s career, if not in American music itself. As it happens, this recording was pipped at the post by a live one by the Philadelphia Orchestra from Lincoln Center under Cristian Măcelaru. Whether the live circumstances were of some account, it sounds a trifle under-rehearsed in comparision with this new one from the Detroit Symphony and conductor Jader Bignamini, where the balance, precision, character and attack of the ensemble, aided and abetted by the clarity of the recording, make a striking impression.

The Blues Symphony opens with ‘Born in Hope’, with the fife and drum summoning up a carnival atmosphere. ‘Swimming In Sorrow’ introduces a cry of anguish on trumpet, arising from the depths of the opening paragraph, the movement concluding on the same reflective note, suggesting a tale born in sorrow yet capable of rising above it in contrasting episodes such as the one in country music style.

‘Reconstruction Rag’ pays homage to Joplin with a cheeky reference to Stravinsky’s dabble in ragtime, the easy-going gait of the music culminating in an explosion of Broadway pizzazz. ‘Southwestern Shakedown’ tempers a Bernstein swing with a touch of Wagon Train puffing along the plains of central America. ‘Big City Breaks’ culminates in an unbridled heavyweight bout of virtuosity followed by a mambo/samba melange in which the composer and orchestra revel in the Latin American dance styles. Finally ‘Dialogue in Democrary’, a furious scherzo, keeps the party spirit alive with the orchestra on its toes through to the torrid conclusion.