Jess Gillam's World
Part 4
“One of the best young saxophonists in the UK”
– Snake Davis
– Snake Davis
October has been a great month for me. After finishing the filming
with Barbara Thompson and Jon Hiseman (see JGW part 3), I had two performances of Malcolm Arnold's Saxophone Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Strings to
prepare for. The piece was originally a piano sonata and was arranged
as a concerto by David Ellis at the request of Malcolm Arnold. At first when
learning the work, I had some difficulties in understanding the music and the
emotion it was trying to convey. I decided that to understand it better, I needed to know
a little more about the composer and the inspirations for the music he wrote,
so I listened to some interesting podcasts about Malcolm Arnold and began to
realise why there was an underlying tinge of darkness to the music. Another
aspect of learning a concerto I have difficulty with is memorising it - I
really struggle to remember my entries and the order of the notes! I knew this was going to be the case so I have
had a photocopy of the score stuck on my bedroom wall since July; I do this
with all pieces I have to memorise, and then repeat the passages I have
difficulty remembering as much as I can. I have always found this difficult but
once it is memorised, I think I can be much more expressive and take more risks
with the music.
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| Jess with conductor John Gibbons |
The first performance was at the Worthing Assembly Hall with the
Worthing Symphony Orchestra under the baton of acclaimed conductor John
Gibbons. The second was at the Malcolm Arnold Festival at the Royal and
Derngate Theatre in Northampton. I enjoyed both performances very much –
performing with an orchestra is an experience I love and I find it so different
to performing with piano or unaccompanied. I fee like I have to consider everything I
play in a much different way and that I have to be fully aware of my role in
the piece as a whole at every moment in the piece. I was very pleased with the
reviews from both performances!
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| Jess with Malcolm Arnold Festival Director, Paul Harris |
I have also been working on promoting the next event in the concert
series I organise – a concert with John
Harle and Steve Lodder. I am really looking forward to this performance; I
think John Harle is such an inspiring musician and saxophonist and to see him
perform live will be fantastic. I am also going to be performing a piece called
‘Berlin Tango” with John!
As I am writing this blog, my younger sister Patsy is playing bass
at a gig at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester with her band “Pesky!” to over
40,000 people. I can only dream of a concert this big one day!
LINKS
John Harle Concert - Friday 13th November @ 7.30pm
Vandoren UK
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