David Bowie ensured that the end of his life was as unpredictable as his entire career when he released his masterful final album, Blackstar, just two days before succumbing to a previously undisclosed case of liver cancer on Jan. 10, 2016.
The modern jazz band that recorded Blackstar with the rock legend over roughly two weeks in 2015 was led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin. Raised in the Santa Cruz area, McCaslin is now gearing up to celebrate both the album and the artist on June 26 and 27 with the San Francisco Symphony.
The two concerts at Davies Symphony Hall, featuring music from Blackstar plus Bowie classics such as “Space Oddity” and “Heroes,” are slated to be conducted by Vince Mendoza. McCaslin will be joined by three of his regular bandmates — keyboardist Jason Lindner, bassist Jonathan Maron, and drummer Zach Danziger — as well as three featured vocalists: stage and screen actor John Cameron Mitchell, Bowie band alumna Gail Ann Dorsey, and singer-songwriter David Poe.
“There were some offers to perform the music from Blackstar after David passed, and it just never felt like something that I was really interested in doing,” McCaslin told SF Classical Voice by phone from his Brooklyn home. But that reticence soon faded when the famed Netherlands-based Metropole Orkest invited the saxophonist to perform the music from his 2018 album Blow in concert
“That group is like a studio orchestra, so it’s a big band plus full string and brass sections,” McCaslin explained. “It was primarily originals, but I did a couple Bowie covers like ‘Look Back in Anger’ from the Lodger record and ‘Warszawa’ from Low. Hearing ‘Warszawa’ in rehearsal with the studio orchestra was so moving.
“One night I was having dinner with Jules Buckley, who was the conductor of the project, and it just came up organically: ‘What if we did Blackstar with symphony orchestra?’ And it just felt like that was the aha moment.”
From there, “Blackstar Symphony” was born and began touring the globe in 2023.
Bowie was famously a stylistic omnivore, incorporating soul, electronica, ambient, experimental, cabaret, and many other musical genres into his sound. (McCaslin has been similarly open-eared throughout his career, which made him an ideal collaborator for Blackstar.)
To preserve this aspect of Bowie’s art, different arrangers were selected to realize the symphonic concert, including Buckley, Mendoza, and prior Bowie collaborators Tony Visconti and Maria Schneider. The three different vocalists were similarly chosen to capture Bowie’s range.
“They all bring their distinctive personalities to the stage, and in a way, they represent different sides of David’s music, too,” McCaslin said.
“It’s an ensemble, so nobody’s the star,” added Dorsey, who was Bowie’s bass guitarist from 1995 to 2004. “The focus is on the compositions of Blackstar and what the orchestrators have added to this incredible piece of music.
“We’re all there to support [Bowie’s vision],” she continued. “As I was telling Donny the other day, this whole project is like a tree. We’re not changing Bowie’s music, and we’re not putting something superfluous on top. Rather, we’re trying to just grow more branches.”
McCaslin was mindful of incorporating the 65 orchestra members for these concerts just as uniquely. The show “reaches its zenith when the listener hears the orchestra, the singers, and the band all together,” the saxophonist said. “The writing very intentionally includes the orchestra, which is not just playing whole notes behind a band. We wanted to take advantage of having everyone up there.”
McCaslin said that in an ideal world, he and his band would tour with a set orchestra. Instead, they have to partner with area groups, like a classical soloist would. “That’s the infrastructure in the United States,” he pointed out. “But I should say that all the orchestras [we’ve worked with] are very talented. That also goes a long way to make this feel as cohesive as it can in such a short amount of time.”
“They’re all so good,” Dorsey concurred. “And it’s interesting — since I’ve been doing the Blackstar orchestral project, I can start to tell the difference in character [between orchestras] by the way they approach the same music. It’s been a great journey.”
