The Prommer
Alex Weston At the Proms since… 2012
‘‘ I’m relatively new to the Proms scene but I have no doubt I’ll be here until I’m old and grey. The first Prom I went to was when I sang Tippett’s A Child of our Time with the BBC Youth Choir. It was such an amazing experience – I’d never even been to the Albert Hall before, so it completely blew my mind.
My debut as a Prommer was for a semistaged version of Strauss’s Salome. The climax when the music is really discordant and Salome lifts Jokanaan’s head in the air was so powerful and has really stuck with me – I couldn’t believe I could get to see performances of such a ridiculously high quality for so little money.
Every year since, I finish work and cycle to the Albert Hall as fast as I can to get a queue ticket for whatever is on, and then get a quick beer (or a triple espresso on the Last Night) from the Imperial College bar next door before rejoining the queue.
Favourite Prom: Gerald Barry’s Canada last year. It’s a piece I would never have discovered without the Proms, and it had such a visceral reaction from the audience – it was brilliant.