Page 69 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK

26 August 2022

Talking Heads – Alison Balsom

interview by Ben Hogwood

We still think of Alison Balsom as a new artist, a breath of fresh air for the trumpet in and
around classical music. Yet all of a sudden it is nearly 25 years since she burst onto the
scene, winning the Brass Final of the BBC’s Young Musician competition in 1998. Since then
her recording career has yielded no fewer than 15 albums, for EMI Classics and latterly
Warner Classics.

Quiet City will be her 16 – and in many ways it is her most personal album yet, as Arcana
th
found when we sat down for a chat with the trumpeter. Balsom has poured herself a cup of
tea, and the chat is punctuated with comfortable silences as she sips tea and I write. An
extremely affable presence, she clearly has as much enthusiasm for the music now as she
did in 1998, if not more.

Quiet City, as you may have guessed, is named after the Copland composition for trumpet,
cor anglais and string orchestra of 1939. A forward-looking piece, it became a popular pick
for online concerts during lockdown, its scoring favouring smaller orchestras and its mood
wholly redolent of the times. It has held a very significant place in Balsom’s life, too. “I didn’t
know I was going to make an album like this”, she confesses. “Quiet City is one of the very