Page 97 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK

23 September 2022

‘To diminish music in education is a

really big mistake’ – star trumpeter

Alison Balsom

By Maddy Shaw Roberts

Multi award-winning trumpet soloist, artistic director and music education
ambassador, Alison Balsom, speaks exclusively to Classic FM. Hear the full
interview this Sunday 25 September at 9pm.

Alison Balsom is one of today’s leading brass soloists, utterly committed to
showcasing the flexibility of the trumpet – from her 2019 album Music for the
Royal Fireworks, a celebration of Bach, Handel, and Purcell, all recorded on the
fiendish, valveless Baroque trumpet, to her latest offering, Quiet City, which is
devoted to 20th-century American music and the era of jazz, from Aaron
Copland through to Miles Davis.

Recalling her early passion for the instrument, Balsom tells Classic FM’s Moira
Stuart of visiting the local library with her mother as a child and falling in love
with a recording by the legendary American jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.

“Dizzy Gillespie was a huge idol of mine,” Balsom says. “And even when I was
very young, I realised instinctively this wasn’t going to be what I was going to try
and do. I mean who could even get close to that kind of trumpet playing?!

“But I realised that he was playing his personality. And I was very convinced that
I could use the trumpet to play my personality.

“I think that’s the case with any musician. Once you’ve got over the technical
challenges of the instrument, once you can get around the instrument
proficiently… when you describe [a musician’s] playing, you describe their
character.”