ALISON Balsom’s career really took off last year when she became the triumphant trumpeter of London The Globe’s Gabriel, featuring the music of Handel and Purcell, a project which she’d suggested, and saw it turned into a play involving lots of music, singing and dancing.

“This was all because i wanted to take the trumpet somewhere else and that’s again what I’m trying to do with my current tour, although this time it’s jazz influenced and more like a pop concert. You don’t really know what you’re going to get, but you trust the artist to take you on a journey and, hopefully, that’s what I’m going to do with the audience on this tour,” she says.

The tour, which will see her make her debut at Sage Geateshead, is a little easier than Gabriel which saw Balsom involved in every aspect of the play, including fund-raising. “It was very expensive to have a full company of actors running all summer at The Globe and we used the English Concert Orchestra. I had to raise the money to pay the orchestra and it was back-breaking and really, really difficult and not something I’d done before. I think that it was such an ambitious project and it snowballed into something that all the people involved, Sam Adamson the writer, musical consultant Trevor Pennick and director Dominic Dromgoole, I just knew the ingredients were all there.

I query how much Balsom had to find from corporate sponsors and theatre “angels” and she admits that it was more than tens of thousands “maybe high tens of thousands, and a lot of work for a musician. The hardest things about it was that is because it was completely different there was no precedent set for explaining what it was. So I just had to find people I trusted with my instincts and judgement for a new idea. When that happened it meant that I had the confidence to arrange my own tour,” Balsom says.

Added to the tour is the launch of new album which the trumpeter admits is a bit bonkers.

“Everything I do I feel very strongly about and people are just beginning to trust me, including my new record label because I’ve come up with quite off-the-wall programmes. This time I’ve pushed the envelope a bit,” she adds.

Balsom enjoys stretching her repertoire from Bach to Gershwin and feels that her unconventional instrument benefits her because violin or piano would provide a limitless choice for three life-times. “As a trumpet player you have to programme intelligently with artistic integrity and make people want to come and be entertained and make it commercially viable. What I want to hear at a concert is a mix of the unexpected with the easily pleasing and that’s been the great challenge over my life. It does free me up because the trumpet can do in so many different directions. I always think, ‘Why not? As long as I believe in the music I’m playing’.”

Balsom admits she’s got lots of friends in the Royal Northern Sinfonia and has nearly included Sage Gateshead in her plans several times. “It’s been bolded up on this occasion and I can’t wait for one of the highlights of this tour which is playing in this space. I do have a lot of younger people who come along to my concerts and it’s always a challenge when you involve them in classical music. Hopefully, those who have never been to the Sage will be attracted along,” she says.

She fell in love with the trumpet at the age of seven having tried other instruments. “It was only later that I realised there was stereotypes for some instruments, but by that time I’d been playing for years,” says Balsom who was inspired by Dizzy Gillespie.

“Whenever I get frustrations about playing a piece I realise that it’s me who has to find a solution because the trumpet is like an extension of your voice. I just love all the way it sounds and that’s what I’m trying to demonstrate on this tour and my album,” she says.

Balsom admits it takes ages for her to select the pieces she wants to play. “I find it has to come to me organically and the current projects took ages because I knew I wanted to go out of my genre and going towards jazz. It took a good 18 months to get where I wanted to go and with Ravel I wanted to do the piano concerto which is so beautiful, but that was a risk because it’s perfect as it is. Ravel was unquestionably influenced by jazz and it grew from there. One of the things I wanted to do was by Maurice Duruflé called Requiem but on the day we recorded his estate said they didn’t want anyone to tamper with it and we had to drop it.”

She’s also been selected to present the BBC’s Young Musician Of The Year series and enjoyed being able to comment on what was happening.

“I wouldn’t like to say it was easier than performing. The adrenaline rush is not the same but you are working as part of a team, which is skilful and professional and I’d like to do more of that.”

“I’m working my socks off at the moment for a new concerto world premiere in China and playing it on TV in The Proms in July and then I’m going to the US to play at the Hollywood Bowl in the summer with the Philadelphia, then it’s the album launch and tour. Then I go to Germany, so this year is pretty packed,” says a breathless Balsom.

“At Christmas I’ll be in need of a holiday.”

  • October 1, Sage Gateshead. Box Office: 0191-443-4661 sagegateshead.com