Alison Balsom has signed a new five-album deal with Warner Classics, continuing a relationship that has already spanned 20 years since the trumpeter first worked with what was at the time EMI Classics.

The first album under the new partnership, due out in August, will be called Quiet City, taking its title from the 1939 Copland work Balsom performed in the Brass Final of BBC Young Musician Competition in 1998. The programme will feature 20th century American music composed in the era which saw the huge growth of jazz, and explore the meeting point of these two styles.

Alison Balsom: new five-album deal with Warner Classics (photo: Simon Fowler)

Other works will include a newly edited version of Bernstein’s Lonely Town (from his 1944 musical On the Town), and Ives’s 1908 work The Unanswered Question. In a different tone to that haunting work, it will also include a newly commissioned large-scale orchestral arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (by arranger Simon Wright), including a prominent solo trumpet line woven in with the solo piano line.

The last two tracks see Balsom swap her C trumpet for an old Bb copper belled instrument, for the softer, more mellow tones Miles Davis created in Sketches of Spain with Gil Evans in 1959, for a recording Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with the Britten Sinfonia, followed by an exploration of Davis and Evan’s arrangement of Kurt Weill’s My Ship.

‘This album has been an utter joy to make’ said Balsom. ‘I loved every minute of the sessions with the brilliant Britten Sinfonia, conductor Scott Stroman, oboist and cor anglais player Nicholas Daniel and my great friend and collaborator pianist Tom Poster. The concept of this project began decades ago, when I decided that Copland’s Quiet City was a work that everyone needed to hear – especially so as Copland reveals the scene so brilliantly via the solo trumpet and cor.

‘There is a true melancholy in this work that only a certain type of trumpet playing can achieve, and across the collection on the album I’ve tried to show that through the unique lens of the trumpet, the wonderful bridge and mutual respect between the classical composers and arrangers, and the jazz greats can be seen. For many of us, the sentiment behind Quiet City is pertinent at the moment, as we emerge from the loneliness of the pandemic and into another chapter of darkness in today’ s turbulent world.’

‘The fascinating meeting point and melting pot between classical and jazz is what has been such an adventure to explore here, both from an historic and repertoire point of view, and my own performance,’ added Balsom.  

Reflecting on the continuation of the partnership, Alain Lanceron, President, Warner Classics & Erato commented: ‘Alison is a true advocate for her instrument. In the course of a relationship that now dates back 20 years, she has enriched Warner Classics’ catalogue with recordings that cover an extraordinary range.

'Whether approaching a baroque concerto, a modern classic, a jazz standard or a large-scale project, Alison is exceptional not just for her technique and musicianship, but for her integrity, creativity and inspiring sense of purpose,’ he added.