Page 112 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK

29 August 2022

British trumpeter

Brushed against the grain: Alison Balsom's "Quiet City"

Berlin (dpa)
Classics by Gershwin or Bernstein in a different way: The new album worth listening
to by the British world-class trumpeter Alison Balsom brushes some familiar melody
against the grain.

The British trumpeter Alison Balsom sings "Quiet City". Photo: Warner Classics/dpa

American compositions between classical and jazz have recently been rediscovered
and presented by several stars of so-called electronic music. The violinist Daniel Hope
shone with the very successful album "America" (2022), before that the pianist Kirill
Gerstein in a great Gershwin interpretation (2018). Now the British trumpeter Alison
Balsom joins with "Quiet City".

Their current album with the Britten Sinfonia under the direction of Scott Stroman
contains music by Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Charles Ives,
Joaquin Rodrigo and Kurt Weill - the latter according to the jazz arrangements of Gil
Evans and Miles Davis. And Balsom, who has been one of the world's top classical