Wynton Marsalis’s magnificent work, All Rise, is the inspiration behind this year’s Festival theme. This massive jazz symphony in 12 movements, a tribute to the 12-bar blues, blends musical influences from around the world in a full-blooded expression of the human condition.

It traces a journey from birth, play and self-discovery, through pain and sacrifice, to maturity and joy. Teeming with the multiplicity, contradiction and surprise which life brings us, the music swings from juba to blues, via a New Orleans funeral and the rhythms of a train, to classical and jazz, in an exhilarating conversation.

Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra join forces with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and Jason Max Ferdinand Singers – all under the baton of the renowned James Gaffigan. With over 200 performers on stage, this glorious ‘thunder’ of a work is a monumental opening to our Usher Hall series.