ALISON COMES BACK TO CAMBRIDGE
Trumpet virtuoso heads Philharmonic season opener
EMI artist Alison Balsom, international superstar and one-time student at Hills Road Sixth-Form College, is coming back to Cambridge to perform Zimmermann's exciting Trumpet Concerto with the Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra at West Road Concert Hall on Sunday October 14th.
Star status doesn't come much higher than Alison's extraordinary position in the world of music. She was named best young performer of 2006 at the Classical Brit Awards and received a Classic FM listeners' award later the same year. She has been a highly successful soloist with orchestras in countries including the USA, Hong Kong, Belgium, Greece and Germany, and she has appeared at the BBC's Last Night of the Proms. She has released three amazingly popular CDs. According to the St Petersburg Times, "in her hands the trumpet rivals the human voice for expressivity."
Before Alison takes the stage, however, the concert opens with Vaughan Williams' second symphony ('A London symphony'). This great work paints a vast and mesmerising picture of England's capital city. There are street cries, the chiming of bells, partygoers spilling into the streets, and a huge sweep of profound and joyous emotion.
After the interval, Alison will play Zimmermann's volatile and moody trumpet concerto 'Nobody Knows de Trouble I See'. Jazz-influenced and including a Hammond organ and a saxophone among its orchestral forces the concerto is a protest against injustice, and it will show Alison's brilliance at its eloquent best.
And then, when the applause has died down, conductor Tim Redmond will lead the orchestra in Shostakovich's tricksy and effervescent Suite for Variety Orchestra (formerly known as the Jazz Suite number 2), full of bouncy tunes and complex rhythms - a challenge for any orchestra, but one which will bring this opening concert of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society's 2007- 2008 season to a rousing and exhilarating conclusion.
Tickets (£15 unreserved; £8 children and students on the door) can be bought online at www.cam-phil.org.uk, and are also available from the Cambridge Arts Theatre Box Office, St Mary's Passage, Cambridge (tel: 01223 503333).
The concert starts at 7.30pm.
Notes for editors
For further information including biographies please see our web site,
www.cam-phil.org.uk.
If you would like any interviews for your publication please contact
publicity@cam-phil.org.uk,
giving as much notice as possible.