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Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” is one of the half-dozen greatest American plays, yet its greatness has yet to be generally acknowledged. The reasons why aren’t hard to grasp. Like all of Foote’s plays, it’s a soft-spoken character study, the tale of a tired old woman from Texas who hasn’t seen her hometown in 20 years, longs to do so once more before she dies, and decides one day to go there. Nothing else happens, nor do the characters say anything especially memorable. They merely show you how ordinary people live their lives. The poetry—and “The Trip to Bountiful” is profoundly poetic—is between the lines. Yet no one with a receptive soul can fail to appreciate the play’s myriad beauties, and Michael Wilson’s new revival, in which Cicely Tyson returns to Broadway for the first time since 1983, is unforgettably excellent. I’ve never been more deeply moved by a theatrical production of any kind.

Originally written for television in 1953, “The Trip to Bountiful” had a brief run on Broadway that same year, then was filmed in 1985. But even though regional-theater productions have since become common, “The Trip to Bountiful” went unseen in New York until 2005, when it was mounted by the Signature Theatre Company. That revival, which starred Lois Smith, was—and I don’t use the word casually—perfect. Had it transferred to Broadway, it would have decisively established the play as a masterpiece. Now Mr. Wilson, who worked closely with Foote throughout the playwright’s later years, has given “The Trip to Bountiful” a staging of like quality, one in which even the smallest parts are played with absolute comprehension.

Ms. Tyson is, of course, the star of the show, but she never indulges in the kind of notice-me exaggeration to which “stars” too often stoop. Indeed, what is most striking about her performance is its total lack of sentimentality. She speaks her lines in a cracked, vinegary old-lady voice in which no trace of self-pity can be heard, trusting to Foote to do the rest. If you’ve ever felt the fear of watching an increasingly frail parent try to keep on living her life the way she always has . . . well, you’ll feel it all over again as you watch Ms. Tyson on the stage of the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. That’s the measure of the truth of her acting.

Part of what makes this production so fine is the unanimity with which Ms. Tyson’s colleagues support her magnificent performance. Cuba Gooding Jr., who plays her frustrated son, is exquisitely right, holding back his emotions until the climactic speech in which he opens his heart at last. Vanessa Williams, cast as her shrewish daughter-in-law, is boldly unafraid to be unlikable. Condola Rashad, one of Broadway’s finest young actresses, is simple and lovely as Thelma, the shy young bride whom Carrie meets and befriends on the bus to Bountiful. Arthur French and Tom Wopat are magically exact in the lesser but crucial roles of a ticket agent and a small-town sheriff. Mr. Wilson’s pivotal contribution to the proceedings is, as it should be, invisible: All you see are the gracefully poised results. You’re more likely to notice Jeff Cowie’s sets, which look naturalistically shabby at first glance but turn out to be aglow with rich implication.

Most of the parts in this production of “The Trip to Bountiful,” which takes place in Texas circa 1953, are played by black actors. “Nontraditional” casting, as it’s known in the theater business, can be both gratuitous and distracting, but at its best it’s capable of shedding fresh light on a familiar play. It works wonderfully well here, in part because it’s never stressed. Messrs. Wilson and Cowie leave it to you to notice such tiny details as the sign over the pay phone in the waiting room of a Houston bus station that says “Colored Only,” or the fact that the people in the room are reading Ebony, not Life. They believe in the intelligence of their audience, and they’re right to do so: Rarely have I seen theatergoers so immediately responsive as the ones who saw Monday’s performance.

All of which brings us back to the play itself. It doesn’t take a whole lot of thinking to figure out that Carrie Watts’s longing to see the town of Bountiful one last time is a metaphor for the human condition, and the only moment when “The Trip to Bountiful” falters is toward the end of the previous scene, when Foote puts words in her mouth that make his meaning slightly too explicit: “I expect someday people will come again and cut down the trees and plant the cotton and maybe even wear out the land again. . . . We’re part of all this. We left it but we can never lose what it has given us.” Carrie is telling us what the play itself has already told us, and we don’t need to hear it spelled out.

Otherwise, “The Trip to Bountiful” is without flaw. It says at least as much about the American national character as “The Glass Menagerie” or “Our Town,” and deserves to be seen at least as often as those two classics—especially when it’s done like this.

Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama critic, blogs about theater and the other arts at www.terryteachout.com. Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com.

By LARRY BLUMENFELD

Derek Bermel recalled the moment things went awry in 2006 during rehearsals for his composition “The Migration Series.” Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis had commissioned the piece, which paired the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. All seemed well until the musicians reached a section marked by contrapuntal rhythms.

“I knew something was wrong,” Mr. Bermel, a composer, conductor and clarinetist, said in an interview. “I felt the jazz band and the symphony orchestra pulling apart. The orchestra was going with the conductor, and the jazz band was going with the rhythm section—piano, bass and drums.”

Mr. Bermel solved the problem by reassigning parts in his score. “Right then, I began to think about how a composer builds hybridity into a piece of music,” he said. “How can awareness of the separate cultures of jazz and classical music fit into one musical architecture?”

Those are among the challenges addressed by the second class of the three-year-old Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, which connects composers working primarily in jazz with symphony orchestras to seek a deepened context for such collaboration. The JCOI will present the first of three public readings of new symphonic works by these composers on Tuesday and Wednesday at Kleinhans Music Hall, in Buffalo, N.Y., with the Buffalo Philharmonic (there will be readings with the ACO at Columbia University’s Miller Theater June 3 and 4, and with the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, Sept. 19 and 20). Thus concludes a process begun in August, when 37 composers attended a weeklong series of workshops and seminars at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music (17 of them now get the chance to work directly with orchestras).

Jazz and classical worlds have long intersected. Pianist James P. Johnson and saxophonist Ornette Coleman composed for symphony orchestras. George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein incorporated jazz elements into orchestral works. Gunther Schuller proposed a “Third Stream”—somewhere between classical music and jazz—more than a half-century ago.

If that vision hasn’t exactly materialized, quite a few jazz musicians have worked lately in classical contexts. For Maria Schneider’s latest CD, “Winter Morning Walks,” with opera singer Dawn Upshaw, the composer-arranger conducted the St. Paul and Australian chamber orchestras. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter has recently composed for and performed with both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Earlier this month, pianist Marcus Roberts performed an original piano concerto with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Wadada Leo Smith’s “Ten Freedom Summers,” which paired the trumpeter’s jazz quartet with a chamber orchestra, was a 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist for music.

The JCOI, created in 2010, grew from conversations between George Lewis (then head of Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies) and Michael Geller, the ACO’s executive director. Mr. Lewis’s celebrated work as a trombonist and composer demonstrates his ability to think beyond genre. “The word ‘jazz’ is not going to hold me back from doing what I want to do with a set of instruments,” he said. “Still, there is a professional and socially constituted jazz field, and people identified with that field don’t usually have access to an orchestra.” If the JCOI fills a practical need, Mr. Geller thinks it extends both ways. “This program means an influx of music that is completely contemporary and offers a different perspective,” he said.

Beyond opportunity, the program immerses musicians in the symphonic world. The workshop week—”a boot camp for musical modernists,” Mr. Lewis called it— included a survey of symphonic innovation since about 1970, which Mr. Lewis thinks is too often overlooked. (He said that Gérard Grisey’s “Partiels,” composed in 1975, elicited “37 mouths open in astonishment at the same time.”) There was practical instruction of many sorts. Harpist Anne LeBaron demonstrated her instrument’s possibilities. An orchestra librarian shared the cost of an orchestra rehearsal (roughly $300 per minute).

Inevitably, issues of jazz aesthetics arose. Courtney Bryan, a 30-year-old pianist who studied jazz in her native New Orleans and classical music at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, asked about “strategies to notate the feeling of improvisation, without asking musicians to improvise.” Mr. Bermel, who, as the ACO’s creative adviser, worked closely with Mr. Lewis on the workshops, stressed one essential truth. “In a symphony orchestra, rhythm and momentum are driven by the strings,” he said. “Most people don’t realize that.”

At his apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y., bassist Gregg August pulled out the score to his piece “Una Rumba Sinfonica,” which will be played in Buffalo. “This middle section came out of Derek’s statement about the strings,” he said as he pointed out measures in which deconstructed polyrhythms drawn from Afro-Cuban music are scored for violins, violas and cellos. Mr. August, principal bassist with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is best known for his work in jazz and Latin groups. His JCOI proposal described his belief that “Cuban rumba can inspire an entirely new way of writing for orchestra.”

In preparation for orchestral readings, each jazz musician works with a mentor composer. Flautist Nicole Mitchell, a composer in the 2010-11 program, is now among those mentors. “My own orchestra reading was traumatic,” she said. “I felt separated from my music up there on the stand while I sat in the audience. Jazz is really an oral tradition. Even though most of us write our music out, a lot of communication happens in real time, and musicians are directly involved with the composer.”

As Ms. Schneider said of her recent project, “We’re used to leaving room for someone to bring the music fully to life. Suddenly, if it’s not on the page, it doesn’t exist. It’s a completely different sensibility.” There are other differences, too. “Orchestra musicians look at a conductor,” Mr. August said. “They’re used to seeing the time, instead of relying on feeling it, like we do in jazz.”

The institute’s community is diverse. The previous class included pianist Phillip Golub, then in high school, and bassist Rufus Reid, then 66 and with a long and stellar jazz discography to his credit. Mr. Reid gained both the technical expertise, he said, and “the audacity to compose for orchestra.” He wasn’t interested in some grand Third Stream ambition. “I just had new ideas that required an orchestra,” he said.

Mr. Lewis didn’t think Mr. Reid’s piece, “Mass Transit,” swung in any jazz sense. “But it sounded like his bass playing,” Mr. Lewis said, “with his particular sense of wonder and surprise and drama. Some things go beyond genre, as long as you know what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.”

Mr. Blumenfeld writes about jazz for the Journal. He also blogs at blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes.

A version of this article appeared April 22, 2013, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Where Classical Music And Jazz Collaborate.

By LARRY BLUMENFELD

Derek Bermel recalled the moment things went awry in 2006 during rehearsals for his composition “The Migration Series.” Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis had commissioned the piece, which paired the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. All seemed well until the musicians reached a section marked by contrapuntal rhythms.

“I knew something was wrong,” Mr. Bermel, a composer, conductor and clarinetist, said in an interview. “I felt the jazz band and the symphony orchestra pulling apart. The orchestra was going with the conductor, and the jazz band was going with the rhythm section—piano, bass and drums.”

Mr. Bermel solved the problem by reassigning parts in his score. “Right then, I began to think about how a composer builds hybridity into a piece of music,” he said. “How can awareness of the separate cultures of jazz and classical music fit into one musical architecture?”

Those are among the challenges addressed by the second class of the three-year-old Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, which connects composers working primarily in jazz with symphony orchestras to seek a deepened context for such collaboration. The JCOI will present the first of three public readings of new symphonic works by these composers on Tuesday and Wednesday at Kleinhans Music Hall, in Buffalo, N.Y., with the Buffalo Philharmonic (there will be readings with the ACO at Columbia University’s Miller Theater June 3 and 4, and with the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, Sept. 19 and 20). Thus concludes a process begun in August, when 37 composers attended a weeklong series of workshops and seminars at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music (17 of them now get the chance to work directly with orchestras).

Jazz and classical worlds have long intersected. Pianist James P. Johnson and saxophonist Ornette Coleman composed for symphony orchestras. George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein incorporated jazz elements into orchestral works. Gunther Schuller proposed a “Third Stream”—somewhere between classical music and jazz—more than a half-century ago.

If that vision hasn’t exactly materialized, quite a few jazz musicians have worked lately in classical contexts. For Maria Schneider’s latest CD, “Winter Morning Walks,” with opera singer Dawn Upshaw, the composer-arranger conducted the St. Paul and Australian chamber orchestras. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter has recently composed for and performed with both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Earlier this month, pianist Marcus Roberts performed an original piano concerto with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Wadada Leo Smith’s “Ten Freedom Summers,” which paired the trumpeter’s jazz quartet with a chamber orchestra, was a 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist for music.

The JCOI, created in 2010, grew from conversations between George Lewis (then head of Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies) and Michael Geller, the ACO’s executive director. Mr. Lewis’s celebrated work as a trombonist and composer demonstrates his ability to think beyond genre. “The word ‘jazz’ is not going to hold me back from doing what I want to do with a set of instruments,” he said. “Still, there is a professional and socially constituted jazz field, and people identified with that field don’t usually have access to an orchestra.” If the JCOI fills a practical need, Mr. Geller thinks it extends both ways. “This program means an influx of music that is completely contemporary and offers a different perspective,” he said.

Beyond opportunity, the program immerses musicians in the symphonic world. The workshop week—”a boot camp for musical modernists,” Mr. Lewis called it— included a survey of symphonic innovation since about 1970, which Mr. Lewis thinks is too often overlooked. (He said that Gérard Grisey’s “Partiels,” composed in 1975, elicited “37 mouths open in astonishment at the same time.”) There was practical instruction of many sorts. Harpist Anne LeBaron demonstrated her instrument’s possibilities. An orchestra librarian shared the cost of an orchestra rehearsal (roughly $300 per minute).

Inevitably, issues of jazz aesthetics arose. Courtney Bryan, a 30-year-old pianist who studied jazz in her native New Orleans and classical music at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, asked about “strategies to notate the feeling of improvisation, without asking musicians to improvise.” Mr. Bermel, who, as the ACO’s creative adviser, worked closely with Mr. Lewis on the workshops, stressed one essential truth. “In a symphony orchestra, rhythm and momentum are driven by the strings,” he said. “Most people don’t realize that.”

At his apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y., bassist Gregg August pulled out the score to his piece “Una Rumba Sinfonica,” which will be played in Buffalo. “This middle section came out of Derek’s statement about the strings,” he said as he pointed out measures in which deconstructed polyrhythms drawn from Afro-Cuban music are scored for violins, violas and cellos. Mr. August, principal bassist with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is best known for his work in jazz and Latin groups. His JCOI proposal described his belief that “Cuban rumba can inspire an entirely new way of writing for orchestra.”

In preparation for orchestral readings, each jazz musician works with a mentor composer. Flautist Nicole Mitchell, a composer in the 2010-11 program, is now among those mentors. “My own orchestra reading was traumatic,” she said. “I felt separated from my music up there on the stand while I sat in the audience. Jazz is really an oral tradition. Even though most of us write our music out, a lot of communication happens in real time, and musicians are directly involved with the composer.”

As Ms. Schneider said of her recent project, “We’re used to leaving room for someone to bring the music fully to life. Suddenly, if it’s not on the page, it doesn’t exist. It’s a completely different sensibility.” There are other differences, too. “Orchestra musicians look at a conductor,” Mr. August said. “They’re used to seeing the time, instead of relying on feeling it, like we do in jazz.”

The institute’s community is diverse. The previous class included pianist Phillip Golub, then in high school, and bassist Rufus Reid, then 66 and with a long and stellar jazz discography to his credit. Mr. Reid gained both the technical expertise, he said, and “the audacity to compose for orchestra.” He wasn’t interested in some grand Third Stream ambition. “I just had new ideas that required an orchestra,” he said.

Mr. Lewis didn’t think Mr. Reid’s piece, “Mass Transit,” swung in any jazz sense. “But it sounded like his bass playing,” Mr. Lewis said, “with his particular sense of wonder and surprise and drama. Some things go beyond genre, as long as you know what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.”

Mr. Blumenfeld writes about jazz for the Journal. He also blogs at blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes.

A version of this article appeared April 22, 2013, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Where Classical Music And Jazz Collaborate.