Alison Balsom

Alison Balsom is a world-renowned trumpet player that studied at the Paris Conservatoire and Guildhall School of Music. Balsom is known for both her modern and natural trumpet playing, but she mainly focuses on the more natural trumpet side of playing.  While being a visiting Professor at Guildhall, Balsom also travels the country giving master classes, and performing with world-renowned orchestras such as the New York Phil.

With Alison focusing on works from the Baroque era she created an ensemble of handpicked players, that focus on Baroque playing, and created the Balsom Ensemble.  This ensemble consists of five trumpets, a percussionist, lute, harpsichord/organ, three violins, viola, cello, and bass.  With this ensemble, she was able to make recordings focusing on Bach, Handel, Purcell, and other composers from the era.

The most recent CD she has made with this group is called Royal Fireworks. On this CD she has Baroque classics as well as new music written for the Baroque instruments.

Balsom mentions this is the most fun she had making a CD in her twenty years of making recordings. You can hear the excitement in her voice in this video provided. This recording was released on November 8th, 2019 and this video below has Balsom talking about the process and you can see the recording area and hear parts of the CD.