Catch Alison playing the thrilling new trumpet concerto by Wynton Marsalis at venues in the UK and Germany this Spring. “I am so excited to share this new trumpet concerto with the world” she says.
Four performances of the trumpet concerto with the LSO under Sir Antonio Pappano will begin with the UK première at the Barbican on April 11th. This will be followed by a performance in Bristol on 12th, and then in Germany - Cologne and Hamburg - later in April.
Wynton Marsalis’ new trumpet concerto is, in Alison’s view, “one of most important and impactful pieces written for trumpet in the last 200 years… No-one understands the potential of the instrument more than Wynton Marsalis.” Born in New Orleans, composer Marsalis is himself a renowned the trumpet player and the only musician to have won a Grammy in jazz and classical categories in the same year.
The six movements of the concerto are an iconoclastic trumpet tour de force. “Trumpet players like to defy authority,” comments Marsalis. The opening March evokes a classical symphony with magical elements. Then the concerto progresses into a romantic, Louis-Armstrong-inspired Ballad, the music of the Afro-Hispanic diaspora, the pentatonic call and response of Blues, a lyrical waltz inspired by the legacy of French trumpet playing - which Alison was well steeped in, during her studies in Paris - the last movement culminates in wild dancing, a prankster’s “Harlequin” rooted in the Eastern European Jewish tradition, and finally returns to the jungle where we started.
The trumpet concerto was co-commissioned in 2023 by four heavyweight international orchestras - the Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra - and the Verbier Festival. Alison gave her first performance and the Swedish Premiere of the work earlier this year with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christian Măcelaru.
Here’s where you can hear Alison and the LSO playing the Wynton Marsalis trumpet concerto next:
Thursday 11 April, 7pm, Barbican, London
Friday 12 April, 7pm, Bristol Beacon, Bristol
Photograph: Henrik Nilsson