The twin centrepieces of this album are Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and the Adagio from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez – both firmly established in the canon of classical hits, and both ripe for revisiting and reworking. Simon Wright’s trumpet-centric arrangement of the Rhapsody occupies something of a middle ground between the lushness of the widely-performed orchestral version and the punch of the original for jazz band. Balsom’s delicious rendition of the opening glissando assuages any initial doubts about the wisdom of the arrangement; her effortless, unforced high notes soon make their presence felt, and the sharing of the material between her and pianist Tom Poster in what has effectively become a double concerto feels as natural as if it had always been that way. The Ives is also an original work. Amazingly, it’s the earliest on the disc and feels, in a way, as the most pioneering and the most modern. He wrote it in 1908, which was very early for music like this. It’s really existential and thought-provoking. It’s also really musically complex and avant-garde. But it has a soundscape that’s just ravishing. Again, it felt like such a privilege for there to be a trumpet part: a haunting, lonely solo trumpet voice that made me love the piece and want to play it and have an opportunity to record it. And it’s a short piece, so you’re never going to really know how to curate it and have an opportunity to record a piece like this. I was delighted that I felt that it fitted in on this disc. Photo: Hugh Carswell. Alison Balsom (trumpet), Nicholas Daniel (cor anglais), Tom Poster (piano); Britten Sinfonia/Scott Stroman

Not here. Simon Wright’s arrangement of Gershwin’s much-loved groundbreaker is the centrepiece of this Stateside collection and, you guessed it, it is Balsom who invites us in with that insane glissando. Risky. The clarinet is iconic in this piece, as is the now flashy, now ruminating piano part, which Tom Poster here finds himself sharing with the star of this show. Indeed, there are moments when I swear I can hear Poster’s inner voice muttering ‘move over, Alison, and leave it to me’, because as smart and quirky as Wright’s arrangement is, I did find myself thrown by the split focus between its two principal voices, especially where they are sharing or vying for attention. Generally the mix of colours and timbres feels slightly confusing, over-complicated. You mess with a classic (and one with such a distinct sound world) at your peril, though I would say that the blue tune’s sepia quality is none the worse for being trumpet-toned. The album is based around American repertoire, featuring music by Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Charles Ives, and Miles Davis (his arrangement of Joaquín Rodrigo's famed Concierto de Aranjuez) — where she has swapped out her normal C trumpet for something more "old and a bit smelly, with a bit of an air leak" — her uncle Peter's personal instrument! Balsom said the usual C trumpet she plays has too lyrical a sound for something by Miles Davis. Her uncle's trumpet proved to be the perfect instrument for it's slightly rougher tone, which worked with the live-recording set up they had. Listen to Alison Balsom on Classic Breakfast Loading... Quiet City germinated from seeds planted in 2017, when the trumpeter accepted an invitation from the Britten Sinfonia to take part in the Sound Unbound festival at London’s Barbican Centre. “They asked me to perform the first part of Sketches of Spain, Gil Evans’ arrangement for Miles Davis of the “Adagio” from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez,” she recalls. “I wasn’t sure I was the right person for it—I thought they should probably be asking a jazz musician. But when I looked at the score, I saw it had been created like a classical piece. It was an opportunity to say, ‘OK, if you’re asking me to do this, I’ll give it my best shot.’”

Alison Balsom: Quiet City

You just signed a five-album deal with Warner. The first one, Quiet City, explores American music from the 20th century and will be released on August 26th. You recorded Copland’s Quiet City, a newly edited version of Bernstein’s Lonely Town from On the Town, Ives’s Unanswered Question, a brand-new orchestral arrangement from Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and two works by the iconic Miles Davis/Gil Evans partnership, Concierto de Aranjuez and My Ship.

I have this habit where I feel I have to prove to the world what the trumpet is capable of... And I end up with a three-hour long list of music that I want to play in every album." Balsom and the Britten Sinfonia regrouped at the Barbican’s Milton Court concert hall in September 2021 to reprise Sketches of Spain. They also placed Copland’s Quiet City in company with Simon Wright’s anything-but-quiet arrangement of the original jazz band version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Warner Classics recorded the concert live and convened subsequent sessions to catch Ives’ The Unanswered Question, the Lonely Town “Pas de deux” from Bernstein’s On the Town and another Gil Evans gem, “My Ship” from Kurt Weill’s 1941 Broadway musical, Lady in the Dark. To say that Balsom is in touch with the soul of her instrument would be to downplay her artistry. And, as I say, there are technical things she does here so effortlessly that we her listeners can just relax into the phrase-making as if it’s something she’s made up on the spot. That, of course, is the essence of an in-the-moment jazzer and I was delighted that she chose to include two telling tributes to the great Miles Davis.

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That line that Miles Davis played at the time — he had worked this out; he wasn’t just improvising throughout. What he actually did on that final recording was transcribed. He was very deliberate on what ended up on that album, and it wasn’t an accident or a decision to just use the best take. So that got transcribed, and that’s what I recorded and played, in homage to Miles Davis as the composer of the trumpet line of that piece. There were one or two moments which I knew were written down for Miles Davis that he chose not to do, but I did do; certain notes here and there. I think that was because I just liked what Gil Evans had written there, and Miles did his own thing, but I wanted to do what Gil had written. But there are very few of those moments. That’s the exception to the rule. I just wanted to soak up what it was that he was bringing to the trumpet and the repertoire. I wouldn’t describe myself as a jazz musician, so there was no way I was going to make a trumpet line over the top of what Gil Evans had written that was going to be anything like what he did! So why would you ignore that? It was out of my love and respect for him that I recreated that. It’s a risky thing because you could say that it’s just copying, but I see what he wrote as composition. So I don’t see what I’ve done as copying; I see it as reperforming his ideas like you would with any composition. Balsom’s agility in the Rhapsody is remarkable – not just in fast passagework but in huge leaps across the instrument’s range. The price of adapting piano writing for the trumpet! No less beguiling, though, is her expressive, at times weightless, tone in the opening piece – Copland’s magical, atmospheric Quiet City. Its sheer meditative stillness perhaps makes it a more challenging piece to communicate effectively, but between them Balsom, Stroman and cor anglais Nicholas Daniel create something profound. There’s something intensely evocative about the solo trumpet – a plaintive, plangent, melancholic sound that speaks just as eloquently of the great outdoors as it does of the inner city. Of course, the jazz connotations are inescapable when the hour is late and the mood is blue; and if ever a piece were to be the envy of a player such as Alison Balsom then it would surely be Gershwin’s small but mighty exercise in fusion, Rhapsody in Blue. But it’s Gershwin’s hands on those piano keys and the Paul Whiteman Band’s principal clarinettist turning a tremulous run into an oily glissando that defines it from bar one.

It reminds me of the thing we all talk about as musicians; we instinctively know how important music is in one’s life. You don’t have to become a professional musician for music to be really important and make life worth living. I don’t think, as humans, we fully understand the benefits of music. We know that there are so many benefits of music, but we don’t fully understand how to apply all of those benefits to the rest of our lives yet. Some of us do, but it’s certainly not part of any government policy! And yet we know it’s a fact. One thing that keeps returning to my mind is that music is like a concept that takes over one’s language when words have run out; when we don’t have any other way of expressing ourselves. Music is almost the next highest step onwards. And I think this is what this piece means to me, more than any other. Music is as good a way as any to explain the universe, and I think this piece is a brilliant encapsulation of that. Lastly, I want to give a big shout-out to the trumpet section, who are experts in a lot of this music and have really thought about it all their lives. They played so incredibly, and they really inspired me on the sessions. I have this tendency when recording. I’m so busy trying to prove to the world that the trumpet can do so much more than people think; to try and cover too many themes. If we’re talking about America, should we talk about jazz, soul, blues, musical theatre, film, or twentieth-century greats? The Rodrigo adaptation is, perhaps not surprisingly, infused throughout with the spirit of smooth jazz – near-constant drum brushes to begin with, and a string bass underpinning the texture – and in places diverges dramatically from the original. Despite Balsom not having focused on jazz to any great extent in her discography to date, it’s clearly something she has a natural affinity for, with a particularly appealing and at times breathy flugel-like tone in the lower register.Miles Davis expressed his personality through his trumpet. And he was effortlessly stylish. He didn’t feel the need to do what Dizzy Gillespie, for example, was doing with the trumpet. That wasn’t him—that was someone else. OK, so Miles is Miles, and his is a totally different world to the one I inhabit. Yet, at the same time, I’m fascinated by that place where all the genres meet. Jazz musicians and classical composers of his time had such respect for each other even though they were doing different things. And mid-20th-century America was the perfect example of where they were all influencing each other, doing their own thing but open to each other’s influences. I had a wonderful time doing it and was amazed by the skills of the Britten Sinfonia, who played with so much panache and style.” The orchestration of Miles is fantastic. How much of it is close to the original, and what modifications did you do? The arrangement feels so natural. Did you have some input on what trumpet lines you’d like to combine? British trumpeter Alison Balsom joins Russell Torrance to talk about what it was like to record her new album Quiet City (out Friday 26th August).