Cover story: Jess Gillam
As she prepares to play at the Last Night of the Proms, the brilliant young saxophonist talks to Jeremy Pound
Back in January 2015, an email from one of BBC Music Magazine’s younger readers landed in our inbox. The sender was a certain Jess Gillam. ‘Dear BBC Music Magazine,’ it began. ‘I am a 16-year-old saxophonist from Ulverston in Cumbria, where I have been promoting a concert series since the age of 12. I am writing to ask if it would be possible for you to include a concert I have organised in your listings, please.’
Organising professional classical music concerts at 12? Impressive, was the general agreement around the office – do make a note of the name. Little did we appreciate at the time, however, that the owner of this remarkable youthful drive and efficiency was also a seriously talented saxophonist. We do now. In the three-and-a-half years since sending the email, Jess Gillam has been a finalist in the BBC Young Musician competition (in 2016), made her first two appearances at the BBC Proms (2017) and started to lay the foundations of an international touring career as a soloist.
And there’s more. This summer has seen her win a Classic Brit, perform in another Prom (to celebrate 40 years of the BBC Young Musician competition), and also sign a contract with Decca, which saw her heading straight into the studio to record a couple of tracks. One of those tracks, the ‘Brazileira’ movement from Milhaud’s Scaramouche, is scheduled for digital release when she returns once again to the Proms in September, this time to play at the Last Night, no less. ‘There’s nothing like the atmosphere at the Proms,’ she tells me. ‘I’ve never experienced anything like it – it was so special. I expect that the Last Night will be up another level again. It might be quite rowdy, which would suit me!’
The Royal Albert Hall and the BBC Proms feel a long, long way away from where we’ve met up to chat. Two hundredand-twenty-eight miles away, to be precise. Though Jess is currently based in Manchester, she’s popped back for the day to Ulverston, a town that sits quietly just at the south of the Lake District, somehow keeping that region’s great touristic mishmash at arm’s length. We’re sitting at a table in Gillam’s tearoom. And no, the name is not a coincidence. ‘My great, great, great grandparents first owned a shop – a grocer’s – on the corner across the road,’ she explains. ‘And then my mum and dad bought this place about 12 years ago. Just above where we are sitting used to be my bedroom! Can I get you a drink of something, by the way, or anything to eat?’
An order for a hot chocolate is quickly dispatched down to the café kitchen, where Jess’s mum, Shirley, and dad, Doug, are busily manning the fort. Doug took time off to see his daughter’s Proms debut last year, but Shirley stayed at home to keep an eye on the business. She will, however, be at the Albert Hall for the Last Night. I, in the meantime, want to know more about how a 12-year-old saxophonist goes about running her own concert series.
‘It started with just one concert,’ comes the reply. ‘I’d been to see the saxophonist Snake Davis, who’s a soul player, perform in Whitehaven and afterwards asked him if he could come and play in Ulverston. Jokingly, he said he would if I organised it. And so I said I would! He came, we got a great audience at Jubilee Hall, and it’s built up from there. We have two or three concerts a year, and previous performers have included the saxophonists Courtney
‘The Last Night of the Proms might be quite rowdy, which would suit me!’
Pine and Tommy Smith, plus various BBC Young Musician competitors. This year, we’ve got Sheku Kanneh-mason coming which, as it’s Sheku, is already sold out.’
It was, of course, Sheku Kanneh-mason who won BBC Young Musician in the year Gillam reached the final, and I’m pleased to hear that, far from holding a grudge against the formidably talented cellist, she has remained regularly in touch with him. Like Gillam, he has signed to Decca, and both are currently continuing their studies – he at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she at the Royal Northern College of Music. So what did she make of his big moment of the summer, when he played at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markel? ‘I didn’t watch it, I’m afraid, as I’m not really a royalist!’ Something tells me he won’t take offence…
When Gillam and Kanneh-mason reached the Young Musician final two years ago, she was the first ever person in the competition’s history to do so playing the saxophone. With a fairly limited repertoire and role models that are few and far between, the classical saxophone is not an immediately obvious choice for a youngster to plump for. So how did Gillam begin? ‘At the local Carnival Band, there was a choice of percussion, dance, stilts, costume making and saxophone,’ she says. ‘The saxophone was what I came to last, after I’d tried everything else. I found I could make a sound on it, and completely fell in love with it.’
That love was fostered in the Carnival Band and at school in Ulverston, and then at Saturday morning courses at the Junior Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Today, her studies at the RNCM proper are supplemented by lessons with one of the modern-day greats of the saxophone, John Harle, an undertaking that involves a day-long pilgrimage to the far reaches of Kent. And for all the major concert engagements, accolades and record deals now coming Gillam’s way, mastering the very basics of the instrument still requires regular hard work. Being able to make a sound on a saxophone is one thing; being able to make a really good sound as a classical saxophonist is quite another. ‘Playing the saxophone is all about sound production, and we learn so many bad habits when we start,’ Jess explains. ‘I spent a long time
‘I play the soprano sax most often at the moment, as it’s the sound I love most’
unlearning everything that I’d done for three years and simply re-learning how to play basic single notes. So that’s what I do for two hours every day, usually first thing in the morning – just play long notes, one at a time, to improve my sound. It can get boring, though can also be quite zen-like.’
For an example of an admirable sax sound, she points to her own teacher. ‘I instantly connected with John’s sound when I heard it. It is so genuine and distinct, and so vocal. There’s a real intensity to it, and yet a really sweet lyricism to it at the same time. Every single note has a different quality to it, and every single note matters. It was when I heard his performance of Nyman’s Where The Bee Dances that I remember thinking “I’ve got to do that!” and really wanting to get into classical music.’
A more general love of classical music came from Gillam’s parents – as we chat, Rachmaninov piano preludes tinkle around us on the café’s sound system – and, while Jess does occasionally indulge in a little jazz or soul, it’s rarely more than just a dabble. But familiar works for classical saxophone can be counted on the fingers of one hand – Glazunov’s Saxophone Concerto, Debussy’s Rapsodie and Scaramouche spring to mind – so a lot of the fun lies in playing transcriptions of pieces written for other instruments or commissioning new works entirely. With regard to the latter, Jess tells me, she has just returned from Gothenburg where she premiered a new work written for her by Harle himself, which paid a nod to her roots through references to Cumbrian folk music. She has also previously commissioned a piece from the jazz saxophonist-cum-composer Barbara Thompson… and has plenty of other plans up her sleeve.
And talking of fun, there is, of course, the number of different saxophones she gets to play on. Who wants to stick with just the one instrument, when you can master two, three or even four? ‘At the moment, I play the soprano sax most often, as there’s a lot of classical repertoire written for it and it’s the sound I love most. I also play the alto saxophone, which is the most popular one, quite a bit and, if I’m playing soul music for a bit of fun, there’s the tenor and baritone instruments too.
‘I’d say that the soprano saxophone is technically more difficult than the alto, as everything is so much smaller and more precision is required. A big technical leap for me, though, was understanding what is going on when I play. It’s not like, say, playing a violin or piano where you can see everything that you’re doing. For saxophonists, so much of it – breathing, the shape of the mouth and so on – is happening internally. A teacher can try and show you what’s happening and describe the sensation, but unless you have an x-ray machine in every lesson you never really know what’s going on.’
Familiarising audiences with the various types of saxophone brings its own challenges too. Not all saxes look like saxes. ‘Because it’s small and straight, people sometimes think the soprano is, say, a clarinet, so I’ve started explaining about the saxophone family in concerts. The other day, I was playing a transcription of Marcello’s Oboe Concerto and someone came up to me and said “You’re so versatile! Last week I saw you playing the saxophone; this week, you’re playing the oboe!”’.
The importance of informing and enthusing people about classical music crops up regularly in our conversation. And, more specifically, music education – or, rather, the lack of it – is a subject guaranteed to light the Gillam blue touchpaper. ‘When I was in primary school, the local secondary school ran this brilliant initiative called the Primary Tuition Scheme,’ she says. ‘Through it, primary school children could pay two pounds a week to have a lesson from a sixth-former. I took saxophone lessons, and also got to hear some of the bands at the school. It was brilliant because it was so easy to relate to the people teaching you, and they got so many people involved. That scheme has, I believe, now been cut – or at least made more expensive – because of lack of funding. That is such a crime.
‘We have to make people understand that music is a core subject, not an additional extra. It’s always been an integral and essential part of humanity. I want to do as much as I can with regards to this, and as soon as possible. And it’s all about live music as well – the more concerts young people can get to, and so experience and interact with live music, will make a huge difference.’
That mission will, I suspect, be carried out with gusto in years to come. In the shorter term, with upcoming concert engagements in countries such as Spain, Switzerland, Finland and the US in the diary, Jess will have the pleasure of becoming better acquainted with her world atlas – remarkably, her recent concert in Gothenburg saw her take her first ever flight abroad.
And then there’s the Last Night of the Proms to think about. The last time a saxophonist played a major part in the Last Night was in 1995, when John Harle performed Harrison Birtwistle’s Panic – a deliciously subversive moment of programming by Proms controller
John Drummond, the uncompromising piece brought howls of protest from the TV audience. Jess Gillam’s Last Night performance will, one imagines, prove a jollier affair. ‘I’m looking forward to it with a huge amount of joy. There’s quite a lot of pressure and I’m putting as much work as I can into preparing for it, but I will try to see it as just another concert. Whether I’m playing in a village hall or the Last Night of the Proms, my intention is always the same: to play the best I can.’