This story originally appeared in our Sept. 30 – Oct. 13, 2026 print edition. Check out the edition online here and find where you can get a print edition near you here.
Wynton Marsalis is a phenomenon in the music world. A world-renowned trumpeter across genres, Marsalis is an award-winning composer, band leader and educator, with 136 albums spanning jazz, classical and alternate genres.
Marsalis is also a good friend of Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra music director Cristian Mǎcelaru, who regularly includes Marsalis’s music in his programming. “We’ll be hearing a lot from Mr. Marsalis,” he told CityBeat in 2024.
On Oct. 2, the CSO kicks off its 2026-27 season with a three-day festival showcasing Marsalis’s artistry as a composer, soloist, band leader and advocate for American culture (and an unseen but looming presence in the 2010-2013 HBO series “Treme”).
Mǎcelaru and Marsalis met in 2015 and forged a friendship grounded in mutual respect and shared values.
“We met at Chautauqua in upstate New York, where we were rehearsing his violin concerto,” Mǎcelaru recalled. “As we discussed the piece, it felt like we had known each other forever. We discovered that although we grew up in different worlds, we were surrounded by families who were dedicated to and passionate about music. Our fathers were educators and our mothers were really strong figures.”
Mǎcelaru and Marsalis did several residencies together in Mǎcelaru’s native Romania and in New York.
“When I talked with Wynton about doing one in Cincinnati, he said, ‘Man, we’ll do whatever you want us to do.’”
As Marsalis winds up his tenure as leader of the big band Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, or JLCO, Mǎcelaru felt an urgency to go all out in celebrating Marsalis’s achievements.
It’s been 42 years since Marsalis appeared with the CSO and he’s joined by his wife, Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, who performs Bruch’s poignant violin concerto on opening night, and the 15-member JLCO, the group he helped to establish in the 1980s, now recognized as the world’s premiere jazz ensemble. The JLCO performs with the CSO and concludes the festival with their own concert.
The evening’s featured work is Marsalis’s “Liberty” symphony, a CSO co-commission, composed in honor of America’s 250th birthday that premiered on Sept. 12 with the National Symphony Orchestra and the JLCO at Wolf Trap in Virginia.
Marsalis’s works reveal a lifelong devotion to unifying different cultures, locations and musical influences throughout American history.
“About once a decade, he makes a big statement about where we can go,” Mǎcelaru said. “This symphony tells us what has been building up inside of him and why it’s so important for him to safeguard liberty and democracy.”
The New York Times review of the world premiere stated, “This year hasn’t yet produced any new art about the United States that hits harder than ‘Liberty.’”
The JLCO joins the CSO for the symphony’s six movements that capture society’s struggles during historic time frames, emphasizing humanity, resilience and optimism.
Expect to hear heavy blues, big band swing, jazz musings and orchestral power. In an interview on Wolf Trap’s website, Marsalis described his work as “transcendent. I was shocked by how uplifting the ending was.”
The following evening, Benedetti returns to perform Marsalis’s Grammy award-winning Violin Concerto, and JLCO joins the CSO for a reimagined take on Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
The violin concerto was written for Benedetti. A recording of the Violin Concerto was released in 2019 with Benedetti and Mǎcelaru conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, winning Grammys for instrumental soloist and conductor.
“It’s been 10 years since we were all in the same room together working on the concerto at Chautauqua in New York,” Mǎcelaru said. “This is going to be incredible!”
The concerto is indeed incredible, a meditation on the fiddle as a uniquely American sound culminating in a wildly gleeful hoedown.
“Pictures at an Exhibition,” originally a piano suite, was orchestrated by Maurice Ravel and quickly became a symphonic classic. Mǎcelaru envisioned the piece as an opportunity to showcase the versatility of both the CSO and the JLCO. The arrangements by JLCO’s alto sax player Sherman Irby create diverse soundscapes in all the movements.
“The structure of the piece really lends itself to this collaboration,” said Anthony Paggett, chief artistic officer with the CSO. “With the punctuation of the promenades, the ethereal saxophone solo in the Old Castle, there are tons of threads to pull. The audience will hear familiar material exactly as orchestrated by Ravel, and movements fully arranged for JLCO. The forces will combine to create aural delights!”
The festival concludes with a concert by JLCO and a last chance to see Marsalis leading this extraordinary ensemble of some of the world’s best jazz musicians, many of whom are composers and arrangers for major artists.
Mǎcelaru has led the world’s leading orchestras, and he is clearly awed by JLCO’s high standards of performance and dedication. He’s especially impressed by how it’s done without a conductor.
“Their rehearsals are deeply intellectual in nature. I did not expect that they would be as detail-oriented as our orchestra rehearsals,” he said. “But they were. And they were dealing with the same issues we were addressing. The only difference is they don’t have a conductor. So different members of the ensemble will take the leading role at different times. They listen to every note that they play, they understand its purpose.”
And as Mǎcelaru noted, the JLCO decides who’ll lead a specific number, “and that person has the same authority I have as conductor. And this changes from minute to minute.”
“I’ve learned so much from Wynton and from his musicians. They have found the way where the instrument they play isn’t just musical instruments. It’s truly a voice that is so human, so expressive.”
Mǎcelaru looks forward to the first joint rehearsal as much as the first concert. “I’ve seen it over and over: as soon as they walk on stage and they start performing, everyone in the CSO and the audiences will understand and appreciate their artistry so much.”
This article appears in Sept. 30 – Oct. 13, 2026.
