Alison Balsom, Musical Life, The 'forgotten' short

[@vicentepineda1860]

What else can be said about a beautiful lady playing beautiful music? Just keep on playing, lady. Thanks for uploading.

[@larrytasker7043]

Just watched a doco re Maurice Murphy wonderful English trumpet player who featured in John Williams movies, and I think was principal trumpet of LSO. Williams commented how he loves the English trumpet sound which is different to European and American sound. This comes from the brass band training. Alison has this wonderful, full, sound also maybe from starting in the brass band. She makes the music sound so great and effortless I personally like her playing above all others.

[@CCM0609]

Never heard of her until about a year ago. She's dedicated and a hard worker. She will be one of the greatest trumpeters of all time.

[@peterlaw201250]

So many up and coming musicians could benefit from hearing a world top class musician talking and playing,and be greatly encouraged to greater heights.Pete.England.

[@saIvete]

wonderful. She fell in love with the trumpet, I fell in love with the music

[@dannylemasurier5256]

This is a fabulous film, please get it released in full on dvd!

[@dannylemasurier5256]

PLEASE get the full length film released, I will buy it immediately!

[@martinholahan]

That was simply wonderful to listen to! Many thanks for posting.

[@davidg.3644]

Nothing like a gorgeous musician - Nothing...

[@mapa6772]

Yes, a musician that hits the notes perfectly and makes the instrument sing, is better than a gorgeous musician. Except Alison Balsom is both the gorgeous musician and the perfect trumpet player.

[@donaldpgrant3743]

Wonderful artist, wonderful young woman.

[@djsullivan9045]

Yes please keep me informed of the full Musical Life!!!

[@richarddunkley]

@bogdiTR1 It is Andante by Oscar Lindberg from Alison's CD Caprice on EMI Classics. Hey everyone, I get requests for a release of the full length film of A Musical Life. I can only do this with enough requests to put to the record company, so post requests and 'likes' if you want to help get it released. Richard Dunkley, Director

[@tomstancampiano6481]

Amazing that Diz inspired her, very hip chick!

[@BuzzVenturion]

Simply: Wow! What warm precision, everything so immediate and beautifully shaped. . . phrases, that is.

[@johnbresnik]

she's a leftie -- fantastic... I'm glad to see that. Another great left-handed artist.

[@antoniopillan4258]

But in the forums of the left handed people are reported the famous lefty musicians that play with their left hand. Such as Jimi Hendrix and Paul Mc Cartney, that inverted the chords of their guitars.

[@antoniopillan4258]

***** Also for me she’s one of my favorite. Do you play the trumpet with the right hand? (and, if affirmative, why not with the left one?)

[@johnbresnik]

***** When you're playing the piano nobody knows if you're left-handed or not. But, I've had many people say that my left-hand work is really good. In jazz playing a good portion of the work is done with your right and I could never "get it" -- my right hand cannot improvise for beans. But, I can do stuff with my left that "righties" have a hard time doing.

[@antoniopillan4258]

If you look at archery or shooting competitions, of every level, you will see that every 8 or 9 competitors is using a left handed equipment. When you go into a shop to buy a bow, first at all they ask if you are right or lefty. Why shouldn’t happen the same for the musical instruments?

[@antoniopillan4258]

***** When I was young I was forced, by family and teacher, to write with the right hand. It has been a disaster, now I am not able to write with the left hand, and with the right I write very badly. When I started (by myself) to play trumpet, I played with the left hand (since with the normal trumpet it is the same). When afterward I started having lessons, my teacher didn’t dare to make me change hand. Now I am proud to play with the left hand

[@juanmoodychow5079]

Thanks for this short one. But how we get the entire film? I'm not only fans, I love and practice trumpet music.

[@GBUKMilo]

Left handed, all the best people are.

[@s-c-iulian]

she`s good at what he`s doing , that`s for sure

[@djsullivan9045]

What is the name of the "12th Century Church" where Ms. Balsom practices? Any idea? Thanks.

[@MrSteamDragon]

I wonder if Alison takes the odd day off, hides away and plays some be-bop ?...just to let loose a bit... 🙂

[@miguelcordero1295]

Super Woman plays trumpet great love is great. My dream is to play like her.

[@AdamKeele]

I want this! If EMI owns this, then they should know the potential for a low priced download on something like iTunes or their own website. Louis C.K. is a comedian here in the US that's proved you don't need these money sucking middlemen to get your art out there anymore. He produced his 4th or so one hour special on his own after going through HBO & the like before, & released it on his website for $5 (you got three downloads & three streaming for that!). He made over $1 million in one week.

[@tomneedham1937]

Inspired by Diz when she was 7, was she? Good to know. As a bass player myself - strictly jazz - I would happily donate the earnings from my next gig (don't ask how much!) to hear Alison jam with the likes of Jon Faddis, Marvin Stamm, Arturo, et al on Cherokee at 300bpm. The venue should be in the Coliseum. Hopefully the last person standing would be Alison. I wonder...

[@neu4791]

👏

[@antoniopillan4258]

Yes, she is left handed ! (look at the 2:54 minute, she is writing with the left hand). But she plays with the right hand. This is rather sad. Such a great artist that has to use is weak and unnatural hand. Why did it happen? I hope nobody forced her. Moreover, the right trumpet can be played with the left hand without any problem. I do it (I am lefty). It is sufficient to add a ring for the little finger at the left side.

[@DayWarrior6]

+Antonio Pillan Left handed musical equipment is such a waste. You don't really need that stuff; you just think you do because it's there. I've become a rather proficient bassist (an instrument that relies very heavily on right hand technique) in just a couple of years teaching myself right handed, despite being a lefty. I never thought of it as an issue, therefore, it never became an issue; I just picked up the bass and played it.

[@GodzRicko]

What's the name of the last song?

[@JarlCorruption]

thanks for the vid (i had to research her for music)

[@ukmmrg01]

I wonder where the 12th century is? Lovely film.

[@Zee1198]

what's the name of the 2nd to last song?

[@williamindiano5097]

oi Alison curto todo seu vídeo gostei de mais

[@stuartjones1963]

Well, Horn players use the left hand - just a matter of training.

[@57dogsbody]

It wont be a solitary experience now everybody knows where she practices everyday!

[@dariocmacedo7214]

DIVA !!!!!!

[@13mmFMJ]

i used the same valve oil.....

[@lol97weee]

No it`s not. It`s "Gammal Fäbodpsalm från dalarna".

[@MrNaturelsker]

dejlig musik.

[@Amalia_Annasya_Adreena]

ck ck ck.. nice

[@georgescancan7503]

+rully ramdhansyah ALEXANDER BOOT Author, critic, polemicist Blogs > Alexander's blog > Submitted by Alexander on 24 June 2013 - 12:59pm The other day I listened to something or other on KZbin, and a link to Chopin’s Fourth Ballade performed by the Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili came up. The link was accompanied by a close-up publicity photo of the musician: sloe bedroom eyes, sensual semi-open lips suggesting a delight that’s still illegal in Alabama, naked shoulders hinting at the similarly nude rest of her body regrettably out of shot… Let me see where my wife is… Good, she isn’t looking over my shoulder, so I can admit to you that the picture got me excited in ways one doesn’t normally associate with Chopin’s Fourth Ballade or for that matter any other classical composition this side of Wagner or perhaps Ravel’s Bolero. Searching for a more traditional musical rapture I clicked on the actual clip and alas found it anticlimactic, as it were. Khatia’s playing, though competent, is as undeniably so-what as her voluptuous figure undeniably isn’t. (Yes, I know the photograph I mentioned doesn’t show much of her figure apart from the luscious shoulders but, the prurient side of my nature piqued, I did a bit of a web crawl.) Just for the hell of it I looked at the publicity shots of other currently active female musicians, such as Yuja Wang, Joanna MacGregor, Nicola Bendetti, Alison Balsom (nicknamed ‘crumpet with a trumpet’, her promos more often suggest ‘a strumpet with a trumpet’ instead), Anne-Sophie Mutter and a few others. They didn’t disappoint the Peeping Tom lurking under my aging surface. Just about all the photographs showed the ladies in various stages of undress, in bed, lying in suggestive poses on top of the piano, playing in frocks (if any) open to the coccyx in the back and/or to the navel up front. This is one thing these musicians have in common. The other is that none of them is all that good at her day job and some, such as Wang, are truly awful. Yet this doesn’t really matter either to them or to the public or, most important, to those who form the public tastes by writing about music and musicians. Thus, for example, a tabloid pundit expressing his heartfelt regret that Nicola Benedetti “won’t be posing for the lads’ mags anytime soon. Pity, because she looks fit as a fiddle…” Geddit? She’s a violinist, which is to say fiddler - well, you do get it. “But Nicola doesn’t always take the bonniest photo,” continues the writer, “she’s beaky in pics sometimes, which is weird because in the flesh she’s an absolute knock-out. “The classical musician is wearing skinny jeans which show off her long legs. She’s also busty with a washboard flat tummy, tottering around 5ft 10in in her Dune platform wedges.” How well does she play the violin though? No one cares. Not even critics writing for our broadsheets, who don’t mind talking about musicians in terms normally reserved for pole dancers. Thus for instance runs a review of a piano recital at Queen Elizabeth Hall, one of London’s top concert venues: “She is the most photogenic of players: young, pretty, bare-footed; and, with her long dark hair and exquisite strapless dress of dazzling white, not only seemed to imply that sexuality itself can make you a profound musician, but was a perfect visual complement to the sleek monochrome of a concert grand... [but] there’s more to her than meets the eye.” The male reader is clearly expected to get a stiffie trying to imagine what that might be. To help his imagination along, the piece is accompanied by a photo of the young lady in question reclining on her instrument in a pre-coital position with an unmistakable ‘come and get it’ expression on her face. The ‘monochrome’ piano is actually bright-red, a colour usually found not in concert halls but in dens of iniquity. Nowhere does the review mention the fact obvious to anyone with any taste for musical performance: the girl is so bad that she should indeed be playing in a brothel, rather than on the concert platform. Can you, in the wildest flight of fancy, imagine a reviewer talking in such terms about sublime women artists of the past, such as Myra Hess, Maria Yudina, Maria Grinberg, Clara Haskil, Marcelle Meyer, Marguerite Long, Kathleen Ferrier? Can you see any of them allowing themselves to be photographed in the style of “lads’ mags”? I can’t, which raises the inevitable question: what exactly has changed in the last say 70 years? The short answer is, just about everything. Concert organisers and impresarios, who used to be in the business because they loved music first and wanted to make a living second, now care about nothing but money. Critics, who used to have discernment and taste, now have nothing but greed and lust for popularity. The public… well, don’t get me started on that. The circle is vicious: because tasteless ignoramuses use every available medium to build up musical nonentities, nonentities is all we get. And because the musical nonentities have no artistic qualities to write about, the writing nonentities have to concentrate on the more jutting attractions, using a vocabulary typically found in “lads’ mags”. The adage “sex sells” used to be applied first to B-movies, then to B-novels, and now to real music. From “sex sells” it’s but a short distance to “only sex sells”. This distance has already been travelled - and we are all being sold short.

[@WOUTERJOYCOMPANYORG]

JE BENT GEEN ENGEL ALS JE VOOR DE COMMERCIE KIEST KIES VOOR JE LEVEN KIES VOOR LIEFDE EN VREUGDE JE BENT EN MAAR LEVEN ALS JE KIEST VOOR DE VRIJHEID ALISON

[@richarddunkley2511]

'Freeview' this weekend only, Feb 9-11, of the never released 15 minute Festival cut of the film. For all the thousands of people who have asked me to see more. Its FREE! vimeo.com/6428050

[@miguelcordero1295]

Super Woman plays trumpet great love is great. My dream is to play like her.