< Nicholas Payton Reimagines Musical Tradition With 'Black American Symphony'

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

In 2011, trumpeter and composer Nicholas Payton courted controversy with a radical idea - replace the word jazz with black American music. The jazz world balked at the suggestion, but ever since, Payton has been writing a vast orchestral piece to demonstrate his idea of black American music through, well, music. It is called "Black American Symphony," and it just premiered with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic. Michelle Mercer was there.

(SOUNDBITE OF NICHOLAS PAYTON'S "BLACK AMERICAN SYMPHONY, MOVEMENT 5")

MICHELLE MERCER, BYLINE: Nicholas Payton laid the groundwork for his idea of black American music in a 2011 blog post titled "Why Jazz Isn't Cool Anymore."

NICHOLAS PAYTON: I was talking about black culture. I was talking about my disdain for the word jazz.

MERCER: Payton, who's 46, is a trumpet virtuoso who grew up in a New Orleans jazz family. So his suggestion of another label for the music hit a nerve.

PAYTON: That really created a firestorm of events that was far-reaching well outside of the jazz world.

MERCER: At the time, he was writing a symphony for a festival in Prague. And he became inspired by composer Antonin Dvorak's advocacy of, quote, unquote, "Negro melodies" in American classical music. For Payton, that meant incorporating jazz composers, as well as figures within R&B, funk and soul.

PAYTON: Charles Stepney, who was a producer and writer for Earth, Wind & Fire for their early part of their career - one of my favorite orchestral things he did was Minnie Riperton's "Come To My Garden."

(SOUNDBITE OF MINNIE RIPERTON SONG, "LES FLEURS")

MERCER: The result was a six-movement symphony that characterizes the history of black music, from enslaved Africans' forced migration all the way up to the present day.

(SOUNDBITE OF NICHOLAS PAYTON SONG, "BLACK AMERICAN SYMPHONY, MOVEMENT 6")

MERCER: "Black American Symphony" had its European debut in 2012, but it wouldn't come to America for another seven years. Payton says that's where his provocative online persona might have come into play.

PAYTON: I think there are some people who didn't want to touch me 'cause I got labeled as the angry black guy. But you know, now politics have changed, and we're in a different era. And whereas I was talking about race 10 years ago, a lot of people didn't want to touch it. Now everyone's talking about it every day, and I don't seem so crazy anymore.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLACK AMERICAN SYMPHONY, MOVEMENT 6")

PAYTON: (Singing) People who were stripped of knowledge of their yesterdays were reconnected to their souls through tribal DNA.

MERCER: Of course, "Black American Symphony" did eventually come to America.

MICHAEL SAWYER: I'm Michael Sawyer. I'm an assistant professor of race, ethnicity and migration studies in the English department at Colorado College.

MERCER: Sawyer spearheaded the effort to bring the "Black American Symphony" to Colorado Springs.

SAWYER: What Nicholas is doing is centering our question of black culture in a way that doesn't push it to the margins where it's not tolerated, but it's being celebrated. When you start looking at yourself as centered rather than marginal, it changes everything.

MERCER: Negotiating the divergent cultures of the orchestra and black American music took some work in rehearsal. For most Philharmonic musicians, Payton's music was a radical departure from the typical repertoire.

PAUL NAGEM: Paul Nagem - I'm principal flute in the orchestra. He's often writing modern licks, jazz licks, for us to play. And then these are licks that would be improvised, and we're supposed to read them from the notation, which is the way we normally play. And it's a challenge for us to have it sound appropriate and slightly authentic.

MERCER: Payton's quartet and the orchestra had some trouble syncing up rhythms, so he requested the removal of a plexiglass sound shield the Philharmonic had placed between the orchestra and his drummer. Losing that shield made all the difference for principal clarinetist Sergei Vassiliev.

SERGEI VASSILIEV: Usually, you know, the conductor - we're all locked in on the conductor. Here, it's kind of like, you know, we have to listen to the drums. We have to listen to the bass. We have to move together.

MERCER: For Michael Sawyer, the orchestra's focus on the drummer's timekeeping illustrates Payton's aim to center black culture.

SAWYER: The seat of power shifted from the conductor, who wanted to set the pace, to the drummer, who literally is the pacemaker for what Nicholas understands as black American music.

(SOUNDBITE OF NICHOLAS PAYTON'S "BLACK AMERICAN SYMPHONY, MOVEMENT 3")

MERCER: Years after his public disputes with the jazz world, Nicholas Payton remains intent on provoking change in both music and the broader culture. And he may have just made his strongest statement yet, standing as a black American on a symphony stage, soloing over 60 musicians as they perform his own work.

(SOUNDBITE OF NICHOLAS PAYTON'S "BLACK AMERICAN SYMPHONY, MOVEMENT 3")

KELLY: That was Michelle Mercer. "Black American Symphony" premiered with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic late last month.

(SOUNDBITE OF NICHOLAS PAYTON'S "BLACK AMERICAN SYMPHONY, MOVEMENT 3")

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