Page 7 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK
P. 7
Colin’s Column
11 March 2022
Warner Classics announces new five-
album deal with Alison Balsom: Quiet
City to be released on 26 August 2022.
Warner Classics is delighted to announce that trumpet virtuoso Alison Balsom has
signed a new five-album deal with Warner Classics. This will build on her rich
recording catalogue of 15 albums for Warner Classics (formerly EMI Classics), and a
relationship that has spanned 20 years.
The first album – Quiet City – will be released worldwide on 26 August 2022 and is a
significant departure from Balsom’s previous recordings. The album takes its title
from Copland’s haunting work Quiet City , one of Balsom’s favourite works for
trumpet, and one she has waited for the right moment to record since she performed
it and won the Brass Final of BBC Young Musician in 1998. She felt this was the turning
point that launched her solo career. In his 1939 work for trumpet, cor anglais and
strings, Copland created music “evocative of the nostalgia and inner distress of a
society profoundly aware of its own insecurity.” Balsom describes it as “A true
melancholy that only a certain style of trumpet playing can achieve.”
The album Quiet City explores American music of the 20th century, composed in the
era of the explosion of jazz. The sound of the solo trumpet in classical and jazz music
