Paris

Description

Ravel, Satie, jazz in the style of Django Reinhardt, the songs of Michel Legrand, the avant-garde music of Olivier Messiaen: all of this crystallizes in a very personal, dreamy and emotional Balsom sound. The soloist’s Paris experience is the cradle of her career: she studied there for a time at the conservatory and absorbed the typical atmosphere of the city and the banks of the Seine. The legendary Sketches of Spain, which Gil Evans wrote for Miles Davis after Rodrigo’s concert at Aranjuez, were her inspiration. “My starting point was the second movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto,” she writes. From this meditative composition, the path leads through Messiaen’s mysticism to jazz, chanson and film music. Conductor Guy Barker - a long-time fan of the Briton - was responsible for the arrangements, which shed new light on Balsom’s trumpet playing. When the two met in person during the charity project Brass for Africa in Uganda, it was the starting point for this extraordinary album - further proof that, as Alison Balsom says, “you don’t need to define your musical tastes by genre”. The album’s tracks range from 20th-century French composers (Satie, Ravel, Messiaen) to jazz (Django Reinhardt) and popular French chanson (Joseph Kosma), in delightful arrangements for trumpet.