Alison Balsom

0:28You're about to listen to This Cultural Life. the series in which some of the world's leading creative figures choose the most significant influences and experiences that have inspired their own work. I'm John Wilson, and my guest in this episode is the classical trumpeter Alison Balsam. Having recorded 17 studio albums since her debut in 2002, she's been named Gramophone Artist of the Year, she's won three Classical Brit Awards, along with an OBE for services to music, and has played with leading orchestras all around the world. She'll be performing at the 2025 BBC Last Night at the Proms, but as will become clear towards the end of this interview, it promises to be a huge moment, one that will bring the curtain down, not only on this year's Proms, but on her whole career as a trumpeter.

1:15Alison Bolson, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you very much. You are one of the world's greatest classical trumpet players. The trumpet is a notoriously difficult instrument to play. Do you remember a moment when you first blew a trumpet and made a sound from it? I do. I was at my uncle and auntie's house and my uncle had lots of different instruments in the house at the time. And me and my brother and my cousins, we were just playing and I had to go on this instrument. And I thought, wow, that's an amazing resonance. That's an amazing sound. It's really fun. It happened immediately. And weirdly, I do feel there was something in my sound in those first few weeks.

1:53the way, you know, obviously my body made the sound that I, it's exactly the same now, 40 years later. Really? It's the same sort of personality coming out in the sound of the trumpet. So personality rather than physicality then? Well, a bit of both, I guess. And also when you start the trumpet at the age of seven or eight, you grow your body, you know, my body is sort of half trumpet. I've grown around the instrument. I've grown up with it and I've breathed, you know, the breathing that one needs to create the sound. It's a bit like being a singer. If you listen to a child singer, probably, you might be able to recognise some of the qualities when they're much older.

2:26Did you love the sound straight away that you could make? I did. Was that part of the appeal? I loved the sound. I found it very elegant, very pure. It sort of touched you to the core immediately and I didn't ever think of it as something that was kind of brash or militaristic. Well, it has a voice, doesn't it? It is a voice. A bit like the human voice. Exactly. You grew up in Royston in Hertfordshire. Just give us a sense of home life. What did your parents do? My dad was a builder and my mum was a social worker in child protection and I have a brother, younger brother. I loved living in Royston and I went to school in Royston until I was 16.

2:58Musical household? No, I didn't grow up in a musical household. I just had the chance to start playing at school when I was about seven or eight. I had the chance to have free lessons, as all my friends did at that time. And I already had played a note on the trumpet, so I knew that I could do that. You gravitated towards that? I gravitated, yeah, towards it. But so did a lot of the other kids. You know, a lot of my friends, both girls and boys, thought, wow, what a fantastic thing. I mean, we used to play stuff like The Muppets theme tune. But I also remember, like it was yesterday, playing a Bach chorale, a very simple four-part harmony in this Jisoo priceless treasure it was.

3:35And it had a top F above the C in the stave. I remember thinking it was incredibly difficult. But I remember the physical feeling of the resonance of four people playing together and that incredibly satisfying, beautiful sound. And I must have only been playing for a number of weeks at that point and I remember it really well. So it's the physical experience of playing with other people as well because you are literally moving air around a room, aren't you? Exactly that. Did you have any understanding of the repertoire? Was classical music played at home? No, it wasn't. I remember things like my dad loved the Carpenters and still does and Tubular Bows was played and there wasn't really much classical music at that time.

4:13I was taken occasionally to the Royal Albert Hall for Christmas carols, concerts, and I was taken to hear English Chamberlain play some Mozart. I remember that really clearly and one or two other concerts I was taken to but that was already after I'd shown an interest in classical music. Let me ask you about another concert that you mentioned in the notes that you sent to us and you said about hearing Queen play live at Nebworth being an early inspiration. Hearing them rather than seeing them. Yes, our whole family is, you know, we're really big fans of Queen and my love of Queen came from the fact that my grandparents lived in Nebworth and we used to see a lot of them.

4:49And I remember my mum and my uncle in particular being really excited about going to hear them across the fields. Me and my cousins and my brother, we weren't old enough and we were in my granny's house and just listening across the fields to this Queen concert, but it's the longing for this band. Nebworth Village is some way away from Nebworth House where they were playing, but was it very clear? Very clear, very exciting, very loud. And we'd gone down earlier in the day and we'd seen the excitement and the fact that I think at the time people could kind of if the security guards weren't watching, you could probably sneak in.

5:21And there was a lot of excitement, longing that that would be us. This was 1986, I think, wasn't it? So you would have been seven years old. Yeah, it's become sort of mythical in my head, the fact that they were really playing live. And I feel that around that age, seven or eight, I had so many powerful and quality experiences of music that have stayed with me. I think the rest of my life is sort of searching for those moments of inspiration again, You know, that feeling of like, wow, I've just discovered this for the first time. And you say they were mythical in your head, Queen, at the time.

5:52It's a legendary concert, that, because I think it was the last time that Freddie Mercury ever performed live. So, I mean, that was quite a concert to have heard. No time for losers Because we are the champions

6:12Of the world

6:19I mean, he was known as the great performer as well. Do you as a performer, how much thought do you have to give to your projection to an audience, or are you just always concentrated on the notes that you're playing? I think the performance is like a portal in many ways into what's happening, what the content is, and I think, of course, the music that was written by Queen, by Freddie Mercury, is fantastic, but it was the delivery, his charisma, his aura on stage, and his magic. I think that's why he is, you know, remembered the way he is. And I think performers have something very valuable to offer the world.

6:56I think about this a lot, actually, because I don't compose myself. And you think, well, what are you doing when you're just a sort of electrical conductor from the composer to the audience? How important is that? And I think you both have to get out of the way to allow the intention through and people to feel as moved as possible by the material. But you also have to bring the humanity to it. and that's something I've spent a huge amount of my life thinking about with an instrument that's technically quite clunky. It's like bathroom plumbing. How do you get out of your own way with the technique and the physical stamina and the limitations in order to basically use it as a pure voice?

7:42On This Cultural Life, Alison Balsam, my guests choose the most significant influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity. And we're going to start with a recording of the great jazz trumpeter, Dizzy Gillespie,

7:58which you say you borrowed from the local library, Royston Library, at the age of seven. So very soon after picking up the trumpet. Yeah, I think my mum and dad thought, wow, she loves the trumpet. Let's go and see if we can find out some more about it because they didn't play. and we found this which was so fortuitous because even now when I listen to it I think this is one of the greatest trumpet recordings of all time What was he playing? It was the RCA Masters recording of Con Alma, Night in Tunisia and things like that It was a trumpet sound I'd never heard and it was very different from anything I do now or could ever do

8:44It was this voice which was incredibly sophisticated. It was instantaneous. His improvisation was just something... Even now I listen to it, I can barely... I can't believe the sophistication and the multi-layered construction of his solos.

9:10And the speed as well. The speed, but also, yeah, the virtuosity. But it's not just impressive, it's so moving. The idea that someone could express themselves through an instrument in such a pure, I mean, both abstract and pure way was completely jaw-dropping for me. And it's quite strange because I didn't ever then take up the trumpet in that way. I wasn't a jazz trumpeter. I was doing a very sort of classical training, like learn the notes, learn to read the music, play with others in a band or in a classical group. Are they very different disciplines then? I think they're very different. Can you play jazz trumpet, though?

9:43Could you? If somebody said, play Night in Tunisia, could you do that? Oh, yeah, I mean, I could play it. I could play Night in Tunisia. I couldn't do the solos because I think fairly horizontally as opposed to vertically. I think in melody and not in harmony. But if you heard Dizzy Gillespie on any particular night playing Night in Tunisia, it would never be the same because that's all about improvisation. Is that something you could do or are you totally wired up differently? I'm wired completely differently and I wish I could do that. And I do think it has influenced me hugely, but I can't do that.

10:13It's like it would be easier for me to pick up a clarinet and play it than it would be for me to do that with the trumpet. Was it Dizzy Gillespie or the trumpet? And I'm wondering, you know, if you'd picked up a cassette of something by Miles Davis or Chet Baker or Donald Byrd or one of the other great jazz trumpeters, do you think you'd be talking about them right now? I don't know. I mean, I love those trumpeters, but Dizzy had something. It wasn't about the trumpet. It was about his voice. It was about his means of expression. The trumpet was his vehicle, but it was about his character.

11:03You've also chosen a 1982 recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos with Trevor Pinnock conducting the English concert, and he's also playing harpsichord on this recording. Who introduced you to this record? My uncle Peter, he gave me a cassette of this. Is this the same uncle that had the instruments at home? Yeah, yeah. And I remember having a new Walkman, and I remember being in Hitchin. I remember where I was standing. It really is in my memory, like when my life changed, because it's the harpsichord. You know, it's Trevor leading this orchestra from the harpsichord, this incredible ensemble of extraordinary musicians.

11:46It's like a breath, it sounds like such a cliche, but it's like a breath of fresh air. And you can hear, even with this instrument that's limited, with the harpsichord, you can't really control the volume and the touch that much. It's much more about the rhythm and the phrasing and the pacing and the intention. And even at that age, I couldn't have analysed what was happening, but I felt something. I mean, goose pimples from the first second I heard it. And I was so intrigued. I didn't even know what Baroque music was or what the instruments were. I don't think I'd ever heard a live harpsichord.

12:19But it was something about these musicians taking this material and bringing it to life was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard in my life and still is to this day.

12:36But there are six concertos with strings and the brass and so much complexity going on. Why was it the harpsichord, do you think? I think it was his musicianship.

12:54I think he was just a great leader, a charismatic, like the Baroque equivalent of someone playing an incredible guitar solo, and it being the highlight of the whole festival kind of experience.

13:28and he'd obviously chosen the instrumentalists and they were all playing their socks off and just brilliantly and there was obviously an atmosphere in the room which was quite, quite magical. And I have had the great privilege of working with Trevor Pinnock since then. And it is one of the highlights of my life, unquestionably, to be in the room with him when he's that focused, when he's working. And he's like a magical being who is able to conjure something in the air and make everyone sort of aim in the same direction. You know, he was a tour de force and he knew exactly what he wanted to say.

14:00He was a virtuoso on the harpsichord, but he knew exactly the colour he wanted to create by putting these musicians together. and it was the perfect storm. And he had founded the English concert in the early 1970s, one of the first groups, I think, to play on period instruments and that's a lot more common these days. But can you just explain the difference in the sound that they produced? Yeah, until then it was very much the tradition to play in a quite plummy, romantic style, you know, that you were playing Brahms or Mahler or something quite romantic. And the timbre, you know, the string players would maybe use vibrato and the instruments would not be that loyal to what we knew were historically what the composers had written for.

14:42It's a more expressionistic play. Yeah, more sort of heart on the sleeve, let's just interpret it in a 19th century type way. And then there was this incredible group of musicians, Trevor being one of them, who said, actually, this isn't what Bach meant. This isn't what, how, we now know that there were these instruments and they sounded different and the tuning was much more difficult and there was a lot that was very much more challenging in terms of getting the intonation and making them work and not completely fail and the gut strings and what have you. But if we can manage to do it with really, really great players, the effect is going to be absolutely thrilling, and that's exactly what he did.

15:17They were really the vanguard.

15:33I see him as quite a maverick, you know, that he thought, well, I'm not just going to do what's expected. I'm hungry to find out what this might sound like. And obviously that was over 50 years ago now, and it's changed the whole landscape of early music. And as you say, you worked with Trevor Pinnock, most notably in 2012 when you recorded an album called The Sound of the Trumpet, featuring Baroque pieces by Handel and Purcell.

16:03You played on a Baroque trumpet. So what's the difference technically and musically between that and the sort of more conventional contemporary, the modern trumpet? Well, the trumpet of that time didn't have any valves, was the main obvious difference. And the valves add all the notes of the scale. So at the time when the trumpet were really treated as a musical aristocracy because it was so difficult to play in the very, very upper registers of the long, straight tubings. So on a Baroque instrument, you are creating every note, the differential notes are created only by your lips. Yeah, exactly.

16:35Is that physically a lot harder? It's a lot less accurate. Is it harder? It is a bit harder, yeah, I guess. But what you gain from that is technical capabilities the trumpet had at the time. And it doesn't sound like there's any limit when you look at their writing, but actually they didn't really write anything for solo trumpet, not much. There's the Purcell Sonata and one or two other things. So I took to arranging this whole album for the natural trumpet.

17:14It was a really wonderful musical challenge to try to pull that album together. I would say that early music is the great love of my life and so I wanted to explore it more, I wanted to play it more and I couldn't find the repertoire so we created it. I went to Trevor with this project and it was a... I had to kind of audition for this because he's not someone who's just going to say yes to a really crazy idea unless there's a very good musical reason for it. What was it like working with him then after having admired him so much? It was both terrifying and one of the best things I've ever done musically.

17:54Your next choice for this cultural life, Alison Balsam, is Adrian Jacobs, your middle school music theory teacher at Greenaway School in Hertfordshire. Why have you chosen him as such an important influence in your musical life? I've chosen him because I think good teachers are just so, so precious and make the difference between, you know, somebody finding something that they really, really, truly love and then just maybe falling away from it when they and they miss their potential. And he was someone who was he was a quiet man. He taught me, I remember, before I went to the junior guild hall on a Saturday morning, which I adored.

18:30But before I had that opportunity and even knew about it, I went to his house at sort of eight o 'clock on a Saturday morning to learn music theory. And I think it was a very selfless thing that he probably is probably the last thing he needed at the weekend after teaching a bunch of middle school kids all week. So this is before you thought, I want to be a solo performer then. How seriously were you taking it at this point? I was just really enjoying it. I knew how to play in my local brass band. I loved seeing my friends at band. I loved playing the trumpet and the cornet. but I didn't know that if you press down the second valve on the trumpet that that meant that was an F sharp and I didn't really know what an F sharp was and through his patience and his just gentle, clear explanation I went from knowing nothing and never feeling like I knew nothing to really having a great enjoyment and an understanding of what was going on with the music.

19:21A person like that in a child's life at the age of 10, 11 is such a crucial, you know, someone you can really trust because they can see you've got a passion. And then I was so lucky to go to the junior guild hall and study with the great John Miller, who, honestly, for years I thought, I'm just going to study with him and he's going to be my teacher every week until he dies of old age, a very great age, and then I will stop. Because I can't imagine my life without having him as my guide with the trumpet, who was such a great teacher. I sometimes describe him as Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid. where you think everyone else is flying around the scales and playing high notes and being really impressive.

20:00And I was just doing the musical equivalent of wax on, wax off and just playing these long, slow tones and just gentle, developing my sound, the breadth of my sound and my musical voice, I guess, but not in a sort of virtuosic way. It's one thing to be studying notes on paper and learning technique in a classroom. What about seeing a master at work? What was the first serious classical concert that helped you forge your young ambition? One big concert for me was going to the Barbican when I was about 10. And Håkon Hardenberger, the Swedish trumpet soloist, was playing the Humboldt Concerto with the English Chamber Orchestra.

20:39And it was the first time I really understood that the trumpet could not only play a tune at the front of an orchestra, but flourish incredibly and make the most incredible sound in that context of being accompanied by the strings. And he was a superstar at the time, and I remember it was a big deal for our family to go to London. I remember getting the tube and going to the concert, and I remember the next day at school telling everyone I'd been to London to see this concert, and that made a huge impression on me.

21:21And did it make you think that night, watching that concert, I want to be up there on that stage playing that repertoire? I think it did. I mean, it's really, that's an interesting question because it's sort of a contradiction in me that's run through my whole life, which is I both want to be up there doing that, but also I couldn't possibly go up there and do that because that would be terrifying. But listen to how good that sounds. I need to do that. So I've had that all my life where it's both something that I have to do, but I'm terrified to do. But something must have changed because you were going to the junior guild hall, as you say, and then you went to Paris to study later on.

21:58So at some point you must have thought, this is going to be my life. I've got to take this thing incredibly seriously. I never had a moment where I questioned, shall I do this or not? You know, I always wanted to be a solo trumpeter. I didn't want to be in the orchestra. I didn't want to do anything else. I was like, I have to try and do this. And it may not be possible, but that's my dream. I'm going to try and do that. And actually, I did get to stay up late and see Hardenberger play the Haydn Concerto at the last night of the proms and think that's just the best thing in the world. I mean, I've got to do that.

22:45But is it very different training as a soloist to becoming an ensemble player as part of the orchestra? It's very different. It is a very different training because you have to have something to say, I think, if you're a soloist. You can't copy your teachers. You can't just play the repertoire. You know, the repertoire has been a huge challenge in my career because there's so little compared to other instruments. And I want to play pieces of music that have great meaning and gravitas and, you know, you can get your teeth into artistically and they have integrity, but also you're not going to completely alienate everyone and no one will come to your concerts because you're only playing, you know, very avant-garde music and you have to believe in it.