All Rise

Just before the end of the year, New York is once again making history. Ten days ago (Dec. 20), there was a world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, and the day before yesterday (Dec. 29), it was the New York Philharmonic's turn. Together with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Morgan State University Choir, the Philharmonic premiered a new work by Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis that filled the evening. The performance was conducted by Kurt Masur, the music director of the New York Philharmonic. At first glance, the combination Masur - Marsalis seems like a clash of two worlds, but the former Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra used to play gigs as a jazz pianist when he was young. Wynton Marsalis, the famous jazz trumpeter and artistic director at "Jazz at Lincoln Center," has been composing music for classically-trained musicians in recent years. Not too long ago, his first string quartet was released on CD, and so was his "Fiddler's Tale Suite," a musical fairy tale written with the same orchestration as Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du soldat." His latest work reflects parts of Wynton Marsalis' life, as Georg Hirsch reports.

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