Detroit Symphony Orchestra Music Director Jader Bignamini didn’t take an easy route in making the first commercial recording of his career. The piece in question is the DSO’s performance of Wynton Marsalis’ “Blues Symphony,” a notoriously challenging 2009 composition that’s both long (seven movements in just over an hour) and intricate in its blend of blues, classical and New Orleans jazz motifs. The DSO performed it in June 2022 and then recorded it during three performances at Orchestra Hall during the first weekend of December 2023.

“I remember that week very well,” says Bignamini, who joined the DSO in 2020. He considers the recording “probably a milestone for the orchestra. It was extremely exciting, but also hard because this piece is very strong, very difficult. But the preparation for these recordings was done at an extremely high level, and we’re lucky to have incredible musicians who … are very flexible and able to play all the different styles of music.”

And Marsalis, a New Orleans-born musical icon who’s now the artistic director for jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, is the first to sing the praises of this new version of his landmark composition.

“Man, they did a fantastic job,” gushes the nine-time Grammy Award winner — the first to win jazz and classical trophies in the same year (1984). “They put a lot of effort, a lot of work into it. (Bignamini) is such a talented musician, and so dedicated. He brought a lot of intelligence and seriousness to it and he’s very easy to work with. They just did it the way they wanted to do it and I liked what they did.”

“Blues Symphony’s” release, on March 14 via the Netherlands-based Pentatone label, is also important because it begins what Bignamini calls “a new path of recording” for the DSO.

The orchestra has a nearly 100-year legacy of recording. It began with 78rpm releases in 1928 with second Music Director Ossip Gabrilowitsch, while a 1982 rendition of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” was the first CD to receive a Grand Prix du Disque award in France. The orchestra has recorded for a number of major labels over the years, including its own Live From Orchestra Hall imprint. Recordings made with Paul Paray and Antal Dorati have also been reissued in deluxe box sets in recent years.

A 2017 recording of “Aaron Copland: Symphony No. 3 and Three Latin Sketches,” with Slatkin conducting, was nominated for a Grammy Award, while its most recent release was in August 2023 of John Williams’ “Trumpet Concerto,” also with Slatkin and featuring DSO principal trumpet Hunter Eberly.

“(Recording) is kind of like your business card now, for an orchestra,” explains DSO President and CEO Erik Ronmark, a saxophonist himself, who served as co-executive producer of “Blues Symphony.” “Even in the streaming world, having a recording out there shows artistic quality. And this adds to our history of recordings with wonderful music directors, from Paul Paray on the Mercury Living Presence label to Antal Dorati on Decca and to Neeme (Jarvi) and Leonard (Slatkin) and now Jader.”

Bignamini says that “Blues Symphony” was hardly a random selection for recording, either.

“There were a few reasons,” he notes. “First of all, it’s a great piece. (Marsalis) composed the ‘Blues Symphony’ very well. And the first time the orchestra played it, it was so good I considered immediately to record it because I understood it was perfect for this orchestra.

“The language of the Marsalis music is very close to the soul of this orchestra. It is also very close to the heritage and the culture of this city.” The “Blues Symphony” cover is even a reference to the Paradise Theater, a jazz venue that operated in the Orchestra Hall site from 1941-51.

Marsalis says his intent with “Blues Symphony” was “to give a symphonic identity to the form and feeling of the blues, using that language in the context of an orchestra.” He worked on it “over many years, just as a hobby to learn how to orchestrate without the (standard) rhythm section. So that was a big challenge to me.” He adds with a laugh that, “When I first played it, it sounded terrible,” before a colleague at Princeton University counseled Marsalis to simplify his approach.

“When musicians play it, they always tell you, ‘This should be better, these parts’ or this and that,” Marsalis says. “I would write down those thoughts from musicians, ‘What can I do to make parts better?’ Over time, I corrected it. Nothing in the form or the melodies ever changed, but the overall orchestrations and how to build it out, that changed. It’s a living piece.”

DSO concertmaster Robin Bollinger, who serves as liaison between Bignamini and the orchestra’s string players, remembers that “my colleagues had warned me months in advance that ‘Blues Symphony’ is coming. It’s really hard. So I started studying and going through the score and starting to woodshed … because this piece is so virtuosic for the orchestra, and it’s so dense. It’s just pages and pages of black dots. It’s really busy. So I was really just mastering the material from June (of 2023) to the recording week.”

Recording producer Blanton Alspaugh and engineer Mark Donahue of Boston-based Soundmirror — both Grammy winners, the latter this year — had worked with the DSO before, during Slatkin’s tenure. “You’re kind of swinging for the fences, right off here,” Alspaugh says of the “Blues Symphony” choice. “You’re starting off with a brilliant piece, fiendishly difficult to play, very detailed.” And also to record, according to Donahue.

“It’s very, very difficult because (Marsalis) used a full orchestra,” says the engineer, who deployed 55 microphones on stage and around the venue to capture the nuances of the performance. “There’s a massive batter of percussion, and each of them is used for a very specific thing and it’s very detailed about what (Marsalis) wants to happen. You have five percussionists running around, trying to cover all these parts, so at any point the microphone might not be in the exact right spot to get this one particular instrument. So you’re fighting a lot of things.”

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The recording team reviewed each night’s performance and also sent them along to Marsalis, who would return notes for the next concert. “I had a whole list of things I was saying during the recording — now it’s been so long I don’t remember them with specificity,” Marsalis says. “It was mostly just general attention to detailing and hearing the development of the movements.

“In the seventh movement (‘Dialogue in Democracy’), I liked the way (Bignamini) dealt with the build-up, how he built one layer on top of another layer, the balance of the instruments. He had a really good understanding of how stuff should be balanced. So we worked to make things clearer, ’cause there’s a lot of stuff going on.”

Bignamini recalls “it was very interesting for me and very meaningful to work side by side with Wynton, talking to him every day (about) his concerns about this specific point, this bar, ‘Be careful about this,’ or ‘I would like to have a different sound, please go there.’ He spent a lot of time, and I appreciate it because he’s so serious in his job, as am I.”

A “patch session” also was held after the concerts to nail down loose ends, but Alspaugh, the producer, adds that for all of the technique and expertise applied, it was most important for the recording to showcase the orchestra’s performance.

“The overwhelming majority of what you hear on the recording, it’s not made with microphones and faders; it was made with the players and the conductors,” he explains. “We would talk with them and say, ‘We need more of this’ or ‘We need less of that’ and ‘Can we do this with that figure,’ so it’s that collaboration with the artist that got most of what you hear in terms of balance and perspective and things like that.”

The DSO intends “Blues Symphony” to launch another prolific period of recording for the orchestra; a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 has already been captured, though not yet scheduled for release, and Ronmark says other sessions are slated for this year. Bignamini, meanwhile, has an ongoing list of recordings he’d like to see the DSO make during his tenure.

“I think that is very important for an orchestra to keep at a high level,” he explains. “To have these kind of challenges, because during recording you have to pay attention to everything, it’s also very useful for the orchestra to have this kind of approach also during our regular concerts. This is very important to keep at the level and to show to all the world that this orchestra is one of the best.”

For more information and “Blues Symphony” orders, visit dso.org or pentatonemusic.com.