ECHO Rising Stars / Jess Gillam / James Baillieu (cancelled) - NOSPR

16 March 2021 is the new date of the postponed concert - 28.11.2020. Tickets remain valid.

The invention developed by the Belgian clarinettist Adolphe Sax needed a long time to achieve the status of a ‘serious’ instrument. The constructors who competed with Sax would go as far as to accuse him of the saxophone being one big hoax, a contraption that could not work from a technical point of view. During the premiere of Donizetti’s Dom Sébastien, musicians refused to play the bass clarinet lines using the saxophone, and when Sax announced he would do it himself, they threatened to go on strike. Years later, the saxophone has become not only a gem of jam sessions, but also of concert stages – thanks to tireless propagators and virtuosos, recently joined by a Briton, Jess Gillam. In pieces written and arranged for saxophone and piano, she will be supported by James Baillieu, a pianist – an under-forty professor of the Royal Academy of Music, considered one of the best accompanists of his generation.