June Emerson Wind Music: John Harle

Showing posts with label John Harle. Show all posts

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Jess Gillam's World

March 2016

Jess Gillam is now a

June Emerson Wind Music Young Artist

What a month! I have been busy this month competing in and preparing for the BBC Young Musician competition. In January, the Category Finalists for the 2016 competition were announced and I was delighted to have reached the Woodwind Final. The Woodwind Final took place at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama on March 7th but until the programme has been televised, the results have to remain secret!

BBC Young Musician - BBC Four coverage

BBC Young Musician - Concerto Final

Entering and being a part of this competition has been a fantastic experience and I really have learned a lot from it. The competition offers such a huge platform for young musicians and I have loved being a part of it.

Preparing for the Category Final was extremely enjoyable for me. The thing I focused on most was trying to be in complete control of my saxophone at every single point in the performance. I attempted to work out the absolute extremities of my playing at both loud and quiet dynamics. Often, especially in performance, I lose control of the instrument when I am playing loudly and I was determined not to let that happen in this performance so I worked on tone quality and control as much as possible.

Rob Buckland

I worked on this with Rob Buckland in my lessons quite a lot; pitching and thinking about every single note was something we regularly worked on but I knew it was going to be difficult to replicate in a performance! With John Harle, I had also been working on having an absolute sense of presence during the entire performance and this helped me to stay completely focused throughout. I was quite nervous before I performed but once I had stepped onto the stage, I didn’t have any room left in my head for nerves! I knew the only thing I could think about was the music and performing it the best I could.

Jess & John Harle

Something I often find difficult is thinking about the music as a whole at the same time as thinking about each individual note. I think every note has a certain importance but I think that the overall shape and mood of the music is a lot more important and I have been finding it difficult to strike a balance between these two ideas. I think learning the pieces from memory helped me with this as I was able to think about the shape and the overall movement in the piece while simultaneously remembering that I can only play one note at any one time and all I should be thinking about is that very note!

I absolutely love performing and the adrenaline and risks that go along with it and this was a performance I certainly did enjoy – I hope you will too if you manage to watch it! The Woodwind Final will be televised on BBC Four on Friday 15th April.

LINKS

www.jessgillamsax.co.uk

Follow Jess Gillam on Facebook

Follow @jessgillamsax on Twitter

BBC Young Musician - BBC Four coverage
BBC Young Musician - Concerto Final

Yanagisawa Saxophones UK

www.yanagisawasaxophones.co.uk

Vandoren UK

www.vandoren-en.com

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Jess Gillam's World

February 2016

“One of the best young saxophonists in the UK”

- Snake Davis

I have had such a great month! I have mainly been preparing for my BBC Young Musician Category Final Audition next month and have also performed a concerto with the Junior RNCM Symphony Orchestra.

Jess rehearsing 'Out of the Cool' by Dave Heath
with the Junior RNCM Symphony Orchestra

On Saturday, I performed Dave Heath’s “Out of the Cool” with the Junior RNCM Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Northern College of Music Concert Hall in Manchester conducted by Juan Ortuno. As I have said in previous blogs, I absolutely love performing concertos and I find the experience truly enjoyable – there is something about standing in front of an orchestra and performing a piece with so many different colours and sounds. Having rehearsed the concerto with the orchestra considerably more than if I was performing with a professional orchestra, I felt as though I knew the orchestral parts well and I felt very involved with the music.

Being filmed for BBC Young Musician

Some of the rehearsal for the concerto performance was filmed by BBC Young Musician to use in the backstory before my performance in the Woodwind Finals. I have been spending a lot of my time over the past month preparing for the competition, which will be televised in April/May. I have had to find a balanced practice routine where I can stay energised and focused throughout the whole of the session to ensure that I don’t practice bad habits.

Jess performing with John Harle

I have had lessons with John Harle and Rob Buckland and they have both helped me to find a practice routine that is focused and beneficial! As well as filming the concerto rehearsal, the BBC also filmed one of my lessons with John Harle in Canterbury, an interview with Rob Buckland and they also came to film in Ulverston (my home town) to interview me. I have enjoyed the filming very much and I am very interested to see how it will be edited!

BBC Young Musician of the Year 2016

I will be spending the next month focusing, researching and practicing my programme for the BBC Competition!

LINKS

www.jessgillamsax.co.uk

Follow Jess Gillam on Facebook

Follow @jessgillamsax on Twitter

Yanagisawa Saxophones UK

www.yanagisawasaxophones.co.uk

Vandoren UK

www.vandoren-en.com

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Jess Gillam's World

Part 5

“The sound of the future”
– Melvyn Bragg

What a month November has been - I have had some unforgettable experiences and have enjoyed myself very much.

At the beginning of the month, I performed at the first ever Cumbria Culture Awards at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick. Melvyn Bragg presented the event as he is a cultural icon who is originally from Cumbria. There were varied performances throughout the evening, both musical and spoken word. I performed ‘The Sky’s the Limit’ by Barbara Thompson; the piece she wrote for me to premiere at the World Saxophone Congress. I also performed one of my own compositions. The piece is inspired by a poem entitled ‘Night’ by John Ruskin – an artist, philanthropist and author who spent much of his life at Brantwood (Coniston), just 10 miles from where I live in Ulverston. The piece is written for alto saxophone and live narrator, and at this event I performed it with a backing track. I am currently working on orchestrating the piece which is a very interesting task!

Jess performing her composition 'Night' with narrator Ross Baxter

While I performed the piece, I had a watercolour by Ruskin projected onto the screen behind me. I wanted to compose a piece that somehow connects with where I live and where I come from. I am very interested in incorporating and appreciating other art forms and in trying to add extra dimensions to the music and this piece allowed me to do that!

After my performance, Melvyn Bragg said that he felt like he had 'heard the sound of the future'! The Theatre by the Lake was a fantastic venue and perfect for the ceremony. There was a wide range of categories for awards right across the arts – from music to pottery and literature to Arts Venues. I was the youngest of five finalists in the Musician of the Year Category and I am very pleased to say that I won the Award – I was very surprised!

Jess receiving her award from Melvyn Bragg

The night after the awards ceremony, I had organised a concert with John Harle, one of the world’s most distinguished saxophonists. This was a concert I had been looking forward to for quite some time and I am still smiling remembering John’s performance! The reason I am inspired by the playing of John Harle is because he conveys such a huge amount of personality. He can mould the saxophone into his own voice and is unbelievably individual. In Ulverston, he performed a wide range of repertoire from Poulenc to Ellington and Bartok to Phil Woods but every single note he played was instantly recognisable as him! His stage presence and the way in which he completely commanded the stage (and the room) meant that the audience was utterly captivated.

Jess onstage with John Harle

I performed a support slot before John performed with Steve Lodder and I played the pieces I had commissioned for the World Saxophone Congress – ‘Sopranicity’ by Rob Buckland and ‘The Sky’s the Limit’ by Barbara Thompson as well as my own composition. Then, as an encore, I joined John Harle and Steve Lodder onstage to perform ‘Berlin Tango’. John wrote this piece for the film about the life of Lucian Freud and we performed it with 2 soprano saxes, backing track and piano. I really cannot describe the feeling of performing next to John! It was bursting with energy and felt really quite surreal.

I am very glad that John was able to come and perform in Ulverston; I have wanted him to be a part of my concert series for quite some time and the audience here thought his performance was stunning!

I am now preparing for a busy month in December and looking forward my performances over the festive period. I wish everybody reading this a very Happy Christmas!

LINKS

www.jessgillamsax.co.uk

Follow Jess Gillam on Facebook

Follow @jessgillamsax on Twitter

Yanagisawa Saxophones UK

www.yanagisawasaxophones.co.uk

Vandoren UK

www.vandoren-en.com

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Jess Gillam's World

Part 3

“Stage animal”

– BBC Young Musician 2014

This weekend, I have spent two days filming a music video for “The Sky’s the Limit”, a piece written for me by renowned saxophonist and composer Barbara Thompson. Barbara and her husband, Jon Hiseman, came up to the Lake District for three days with Asue Azar to film me playing the piece in various locations with stunning scenery.

“The Sky’s the Limit” was written for me to perform at the World Saxophone Congress in July and is a piece for alto saxophone, piano and strings. Barbara says, “It leads the saxophone into groundbreaking areas while retaining melodic and rhythmical elements. The saxophone is a very exciting instrument to write for because it has so many variations of tone and colour and the player can make his or her sound unique. It is a real treat to write a piece for such a talented young 17-year-old saxophonist, and I hope this will be the first of many collaborations”.

Jess with Barbara Thompson

Filming the video was a very interesting experience and I enjoyed learning about how this world works and it also gave me a chance to appreciate the natural beauty of where I come from. However, I was a little nervous playing on the top of a crag looking over Windermere – I wasn’t expecting an audience and people were gathering round to see what was happening! The sound in open air just did not travel no matter how much I attempted to project and make the sound sing. I began playing saxophone when I was 7 in the Barracudas carnival band so I am quite used to playing on the streets but this was quite different – no PA and no buildings for the sound to bounce off meant I could only produce a very dead sound. This meant I had to think about all other elements of playing a piece of music a lot more because I knew there wasn’t very much I could do about the sound projection so I considered rhythmic accuracy, dynamic control, vibrato control and articulation in a much more meticulous way than I usually do but the performance was not comparable to one indoors where all of these elements can be projected!

Jess playing to the elements!

We also filmed at Birkrigg Common, very close to where I live. Jon asked me to stand on the trig point and this was quite a scary place to perform the piece – I am very clumsy at the best of times and playing without being able to move took a lot of concentration!

Working with Barbara and Jon has been a truly inspirational experience – they are both so dedicated and passionate about what they do and really live and breathe music. They have both had very successful and varied careers and listening to their anecdotes and stories about gigs and the lengths they used to have to go to even just to record music is fascinating! Barbara has inspired me with her music since I was 12 years old and to now be working with her is quite a surreal experience! 8 years ago, Barbara was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and the way she continues, still composing and creating music, is quite unbelievable.

Jess at Windermere

Jon is now editing the video and it will be released on YouTube once the editing and recording has been completed.

I have also spent a lot of time this month practicing the Malcolm Arnold Saxophone Concerto as I will be performing it with the Worthing Symphony Orchestra in October at the Malcolm Arnold Festival in Northampton and at the Worthing Assembly Hall. Preparing a concerto is something I really enjoy and trying to connect information about a composer with the themes and moods in their music is fascinating and I am really looking forward to performing the piece.