The Score | “All Rise” in Tulsa

This spring, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma commemorated the somber occasion of the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre with a week’s worth of events, capped by a June 6 performance by the Tulsa Symphony at the BOK Center arena. In remembrance of the massacre, the Tulsa Symphony and conductor David Robertson performed Wynton Marsalis’s Symphony No. 1 (“All Rise”) with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Marsalis—who is also managing and artistic director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra— joined the onstage forces on trumpet, along with the Tulsa Community Commemoration Choir, comprising singers from local churches, schools, and arts groups, led by Damien L. Sneed. “All Rise,” which incorporates influences from classical, jazz, gospel, blues, and Latin-based music, was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and first performed at Lincoln Center in 1999. In his Tulsa World review of Marsalis’s work, James D. Watts Jr. wrote, “One would be hard-pressed to think of a more appropriate way officially to conclude the city of Tulsa’s commemoration of this tragedy than with a performance of this epic work…. As ‘All Rise’ unfolded over the course of the two hours it takes to perform it, the three sections evoked a state of grace and innocence, a horrific fall from that state, and the realization that to rise up again, you’re going to need help.” The concert was presented in collaboration with the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission; approximately 100 descendants of massacre survivors received free tickets.