David Bowie never had the chance to play songs from his “Blackstar” album live.

The rock icon died Jan. 10, 2016 — just two days after his 69th birthday and the release of his 26th and final studio album. It debuted at No. 1 around the world, including the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S., and was critically lauded for its thematic blend of personal/universal outlook on mortality.

Now a group of musicians who played on the album — led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin and including keyboardist Jason Lindner and bassist Tim Lefebvre — are presenting its seven songs, as well as other Bowie material, as “Blackstar Symphony: The Music of David Bowie,” an orchestra show that will be staged this week with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

“After (‘Blackstar’) came out and David passed, as you’d imagine, there was some request for us to play the music from the record,” recalls the New York-based McCaslin, who serves as the “Blackstar Symphony’s” artistic director. “It just didn’t feel like something I was interested in, really, because that was such a special experience, one that had such a big effect, a transformative effect on my life. I didn’t want to just start doing the music.”

McCaslin and his own ensemble did occasionally include the “Blackstar” track “Lazarus” as an encore in tribute to Bowie, however. The idea of a symphonic presentation, meanwhile, came from a discussion with Jules Buckley, chief conductor of the Netherlands’ Metropole Orkeste, before McCaslin joined it for a presentation of his 2018 album “Blow” that also included a couple of Bowie tracks.

“We were at dinner and I was sharing with Jules how powerful it was to hear those songs reimagined for the orchestra model, and it just came up, like, ‘What if we did ‘Blackstar’ with that approach?’ remembers McCaslin, a California native who moved to New York after studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He was part of the band Steps Ahead and began working with Bowie in 2014 on the “Nothing Has Changed” compilation album. The orchestral idea, he says, “felt like something that was exciting, something where we’d have a lot of creative leeway. That felt like an undertaking worth of the music of ‘Blackstar.’

“The idea was the create a new piece of art — the DNA of the (album), of course, but the vision behind it was not just to play the record verbatim, note for note; the idea was we’d try to reimagine it having access to this orchestra and add things and take some chances and have moments where we expand from ‘Blackstar’ into other territory. It’s a balancing act, as you can imagine, but it’s something I feel like David would have been into aesthetically because that’s how he approached music — and art in general.”

The pandemic pause provided a window for work in earnest on what would become “Blackstar Symphony” and give the orchestrators — Buckley, “Blackstar” co-producer and longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, Maria Schneider, Vincent Mendoza, Tony Dudley and others — time to figure out how their arrangements. “The writing intentionally includes the orchestra,” McCaslin explains. “Their role in not playing what we call ‘footballs’ behind us, or … window dressing. Their role is really integrated into what we’re doing. When it all comes together, you hear this combination of orchestra sound, band sound and singer sound, all interacting with each other.

“That was part of the mission statement from the beginning, ‘Let’s take advantage of the fact we have this rare opportunity to bring these worlds together.’”

The results, McCaslin says, have been striking, especially on “Blackstar’s” title track which “opened up more, this balance of the band playing free and the orchestra interacting with that,” and “Girl Loves Me,” which “goes into a different place harmonically.” “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime),” which was McCaslin’s first recording with Bowie and also appears on “Blackstar,” draws faithfully from an orchestrated version Schneider did for the song when it was recorded.

With the first performances of “Blackstar Symphony” held in September 2022 with the Charlotte Symphony in North Carolina — and subsequently in Portland, Seattle and Washington, D.C. — the concerts also include Bowie songs “that feel connected to ‘Blackstar,’” including “Life on Mars,” “Space Oddity, “Heroes” and others, and encores by the band along, with the orchestra. In addition to McCaslin, Lindner and Lefebvre, the ensemble also includes longtime Bowie band member Gail Ann Dorsey, vocalist David Poe, drummer Zach Danziger, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” creator John Cameron Mitchell and conductor Tim Davies.

“I have to say it brings up a lot of feelings, doing this,” acknowledges McCaslin, who’s deliberately not yet recorded the “Blackstar Symphony” in order to allow it to develop, but expects to do that at some point. “Especially when we first started, it was quite emotional. Gail is sort of at the heart of this project in a lot of ways, so it’s quite emotional for us together because (Bowie) meant too much to both of us in his belief of us and as the individual artist that he was. He made such a great stamp in our lives, so we share that and a lot of those feelings come up when we’re playing.

“And then there’s the beauty and wonder of hearing the orchestra play this music. It’s all very meaningful … and very exciting. It reminds us of his courage as an artist, just feeling uninhibited by boundaries and moving from musical language to musical language, not somebody who made the same record over and over again. ‘Blackstar’ was his final gift to his fans. I hope what we’re doing is paying tribute to that spirit, as well as the music itself.”