Page 80 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK

golds at the 'Trumpet Olympics', reworking Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with pianist Tom
Poster and arranger Simon Wright for the project, and the special qualities which an old
instrument belonging to her 'polymath' uncle brings to the Gil Evans/Miles Davis pieces on
the recording...

Were the ‘quiet cities’ of lockdown a catalyst for

this project?

In hindsight it probably was partly inspired by lockdown – but at the time I didn’t think of
that, because Copland’s Quiet City has been with me all of my trumpet-playing life. When I
discovered the piece as a teenager I thought ‘Oh yes, this is the character of the trumpet that
really resonates with me’. As trumpet-players we have much less great repertoire than many
of the other instrumentalists, so when we do have something of this quality it feels even more
precious.

I’ve wanted to record the piece for such a long time, and this felt like the right moment for
various reasons. I definitely felt an enormous sense of privilege and gratitude that we could
gather lots of musicians in a room to create this amazing piece, something we took for
granted before lockdown - I don’t know whether you can hear that in the disc, but we
certainly felt it! Each of us had had our own individual experience of being separated from
others, and yet there are works of art like the Copland which sum it up for everyone.

Even when I was much younger, Quiet City always conjured up a very strong visual image
for me: the idea of looking out of a window of a New York apartment and seeing people in
the distance but also feeling so alone. It’s not necessarily sadness, but a sense of isolation
which the trumpet captures so well. And of course that relates to the experience of being a
soloist, too - you’re playing with other people and connecting, but at the same time you’re on
your own! You get a similar sort of thing in Lonely Town as well, that late-night feeling
where the city was busy and bustling, but now everyone’s asleep and you’re just left alone
with your thoughts…

Where did you record the album, and how much

of a role did physical distancing play in the

process?

We were at Milton Court, which is a fantastic acoustic for the trumpet and strings - it’s a
beautiful wooden space and has a real warmth to it. And we’re not embarrassed about the
microphones: they’re part and parcel of the beast you’re creating, and we really enjoyed
playing with different positions for this programme. For the Ives I was standing fifteen
metres away from the strings and the main mics were in the room capturing a lot of
resonance, but you can’t play those Gil Evans/Miles Davis pieces later on in the disc without
almost touching the mic. There were takes where I had to stop because I banged it with the
mute of the trumpet!