Page 98 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK

Alison Balsom is an award-winning trumpet soloist. Picture: Warner Classics

Aged 18, Balsom was accepted to study at the Guildhall School of Music and
Drama, where she received the Principal’s Prize for the highest mark in her year.
She went on to study at the Conservatoire de Paris with the great Swedish
trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger, who she recalls seeing in concert at the
Barbican aged nine.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” she tells Stuart. “I thought, wow, that’s
what the trumpet can do. It can stand at the front of the orchestra. It’s got this
amazing power, but also incredibly beautiful sound.

“That’s what I wanted to do. And I knew that doing anything else would seem
kind of pointless.”

Balsom is a fierce advocate for music education, and early exposure to music-
making. Aged seven, she started free trumpet lessons at her primary school in
Hertfordshire, and between the ages of 15 to 18, played in the National Youth
Orchestra of Great Britain, Classic FM’s Orchestra of Teenagers. Today, Balsom
is perturbed by the diminishing role of music in the school curriculum.

“Music should be front and centre in education,” Balsom tells Classic FM. “I think
it’s so short-sighted when it isn’t. It opens a door in a child’s mind,” she adds,
which can “help them find their focus with other things.

“It’s a relationship that doesn’t have to be verbal. It’s something much deeper
and more primal than that, in fact. We’re only now in our society beginning to
realise how vital it can be.