A Place in Time: Jess Gillam and LMP

programme notes

Tchaikovsky Serenade

Tchaikovsky’s life has been the subject of much discussion and speculation – particularly the circumstances of his death, whether it was from a form of cholera (as long believed), or perhaps suicide. His final years were undoubtedly tormented, which is reflected in some of the most impassioned orchestral music ever written.

This Serenade was written at a relatively calm period of Tchaikovsky’s life when he was being assisted by Madam Nadezhda von Meck, the wealthy patron who sent him money for many years – on the condition that they never met! Tchaikovsky wrote to Madam von Meck in October 1880: ‘You can imagine, dear friend, that recently my Muse has been very kind, when I tell you that I have written two works very quickly: a Festival Overture [the ‘1812’ Overture]… and a Serenade in four movements for string orchestra… I composed the serenade… from inner conviction. It is a heartfelt piece and so, I dare to think, is not lacking in real qualities.’

Tchaikovsky was not being unduly modest – the Serenade certainly does not lack real qualities, and is one of his most popular works today. It is full of wonderful melodies, in particular the second movement Valse, which is often performed on its own and was given an encore at the first performance. The opening movement starts with a slow introduction, the music of which returns both at the end of the first movement and at the very end of the piece. Following the Valse is the Elegia, which is a quietly melancholic movement of a theme (first stated by the violins over a pizzicato [plucked] accompaniment) and variations. The Finale uses two Russian folk tunes for its material (not just the one implied by the title), the first in the slow introduction and the second as the main theme of the Allegro.

James Macmillan Saxophone Concerto

This short saxophone concerto (each movement is about 5 minutes in duration) is based on archetypes of Scottish traditional music. The first movement follows the pattern of a medley of fast dance forms, each section becoming faster and faster. Nevertheless, the music moves into unexpected territory, with markings like ‘feroce’, ‘strepitoso’ and ‘misterioso’.

The second movement loosely follows the practice of singing Gaelic psalmody in the Scottish western isles, where a cantor (in this case the saxophone soloist) leads with a melodic line, to be followed by the congregation (the string orchestra) who weave a heterophonic texture out of the canonic flow of parts. The music settles eventually into a series of wispy fragments on the saxophone, accompanied by pizzicato pluckings over a low B major chord.

The last movement is based on the simple compound rhythm of the jig, marked ‘giocoso’. The main melody is thrown around between the different sections of the orchestra, all playing pizzicato. The tonality becomes unsettled when the soloist enters and gradually the music develops into unexpected contexts. After a brief cadenza the music settles into a static, spectral chord with ethereal slidings on the cellos, under fading fragments on solo saxophone.

Vaughan-Williams Fantasia on Greensleeves

Having studied history and music at Trinity College, Cambridge, Vaughan Williams returned to the Royal College of Music and studied composition with Hubert Parry, who became a close friend. His composing developed slowly and it was not until he was 30 that the song Linden Lea became his first publication. He mixed composition with conducting, lecturing and editing other music, notably that of Henry Purcell and the English Hymnal.

In 1904 Vaughan Williams discovered English folk songs, which were fast becoming extinct owing to the increase of literacy and printed music in rural areas. The gathering of folksongs and dances had begun in the middle of the 19th century and led to the foundation of the Folk Song Society in 1899. The movement gathered momentum through the zeal of Cecil Sharp who, realizing that the oral tradition was rapidly dying out, determined that it was essential to collect the songs urgently before they were lost for ever.

Vaughan Williams became an avid collector, notating over 800 songs during the next decade. The discovery of what he described as the “intrinsic beauty” of folksong affected his own compositions profoundly; folksong became a liberating force, showing him a path to develop his own musical personality. As he summed it up in A Musical Autobiography: ‘If a composer can, by tapping the sources hidden in folksong, make beautiful music, he will be disloyal to his art if he does not make full use of such an avenue of beauty’.

Vaughan Williams‘s small-scale choral works are a comparatively lesser-known aspect of his art. The majority of these compositions arose from his folksong-collecting activities at the turn of the century. Greensleeves is not strictly speaking a folksong but one that has survived in both the oral tradition and in print for over 400 years. The tune has played host to several different texts over the centuries. In 1580 it was referred to as ‘A new Northern Dittie of the Lady Green Sleeves’; it was published in William Ballet’s Lute Book of 1600 and included in the seventh edition of Playford’s The Dancing Master.

He incorporated this tune, as well as a lighthearted folk song, “Lovely Joan”, which makes an appearance as a contrasting middle section. Both tunes were woven together to provide atmospheric music for the opera. The Fantasia heard tonight was arranged for flutes, piano and strings as an independent work and premiered in 1934.

Jessie Montgomery Strum

Strum is the culminating result of several versions of a string quintet I wrote in 2006. It was originally written for the Providence String Quartet and guests of Community MusicWorks Players, then arranged for string quartet in 2008 with several small revisions. In 2012 the piece underwent its final revisions with a rewrite of both the introduction and the ending for the Catalyst Quartet in a performance celebrating the 15th annual Sphinx Competition.

Originally conceived for the formation of a cello quintet, the voicing is often spread wide over the ensemble, giving the music an expansive quality of sound. Within Strum I utilized texture motives, layers of rhythmic or harmonic ostinati that string together to form a bed of sound for melodies to weave in and out. The strumming pizzicato serves as a texture motive and the primary driving rhythmic underpinning of the piece. Drawing on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement, the piece has a kind of narrative that begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration.

John Harle RANT!

RANT! is a portrait of Jess Gillam – her energy, her sound and her presence, painted in music from her own part of England.

A ‘rant’ in the tradition of English Folk music is an energetic dance, and means ‘to make merry’ – which is exactly what Jess does, both in her fearless live performance and in the exuberance she has brought to the recording studio for this album.

RANT! draws on Cumbrian folk tunes sourced from Ed Heslam’s unique collection folk music resource Music of Cumberland and Westmoreland, as well as several tunes composed by Ed himself.

These folk tunes include The Ulverstone Volunteers, which is trumpet ‘call to arms’ from her own home town, and the piece opens with a quote from Cumberland Nelly, and this is the tune that I have fed through RANT! to eventually re-appear in the final climactic section.

Dowland Flow My Tears

Flow my tears is a hauntingly melancholic work, widely seen as of most iconic songs of the English Renaissance. Published in 1600, it was originally an instrumental pavane titled Lachrimae, before Dowland set it to words and created the emotive lute song that is well-loved to this day.

It features a striking descending melody, known as a ‘falling tear’ motif, while the text reflects on themes of isolation and longing. These elements, combined with the delicate interplay between the lute and voice, evoke a timeless sense of emotion while also capturing the spirit of the age.

Bartok (arr. Willner) Romanian Folk Dances

Throughout his career Béla Bartók was influenced by folk music. Together with fellow countryman and composer Zoltán Kodály, he travelled extensively in Romania and neighbouring countries searching for and collecting thousands of authentic folk songs. They visited hundreds of villages and made numerous recordings of peasants singing and playing instruments. What Bartók and Kodály discovered was not just an unsuspected wealth of folk music but a highly original musical language which had little in common with the accepted forms of Western music. Its characteristics were a different arrangement of the different notes in the basic scale and their associated harmonies, and a strongly accented, complex rhythm. Both composers realised that they could create a new and powerful idiom for themselves by totally accepting the features of Hungarian folk music without adapting them, as Liszt had done, to the more ʽcivilisedʼ classical forms and harmonies. Bartók in particular seemed suddenly to have found his identity, and those of his works which established his fame as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century were all the result of this discovery.

The Romanian Folk Dances were originally written for piano and date from 1915. Two years later Bartók arranged them for orchestra, and he, as well as others, made further arrangements for a variety of instrumental combinations. The works consist of seven short dances from different regions, and they are played with hardly a break between them.

Trad. (arr. Tonsgaard Sørensen) Shine You No More

Shine You No More is an atmospheric piece by Danish violinist and composer Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, written for the Danish String Quartet’s 2017 album Last Leaf. It combines elements of both Nordic folk music and the classical tradition.

In relation to the latter, Sørensen was inspired by Dowland’s Flow My Tears, drawing upon it’s chord progressions. Similarly to the Dowland, Shine You No More has a feel of both the ancient and the timeless, exploring themes of memory and loss.

Player list

Violin 1
Ruth Rogers
Ann Criscuolo
Alicia Berendse
Daniel Stroud
Edward McCullagh
Willemijn Steenbakkers

Violin 2
Antonia Kesel
Lucy Jeal
Jeremy Metcalfe
Eleanor Mathieson
Matthew Ward

Viola
Christine Anderson
Sophie Renshaw
Claire Newton
Diana Mathews

Cello
Sebastian Comberti
Leo Popplewell
Sarah Butcher

Double Bass
Benjamin Russell
Phoebe Clarke

Harp
Rosanna Rolton

Management Team

CHIEF EXECUTIVE

Flynn Le Brocq

CONCERTS

Projects Director Sophie Haynes
Orchestra Manager & Fixer Jason Weir
Artistic Projects Coordinator Alex Mackinder

DEVELOPMENT

Development Manager Tristen Hennigs
Fundraising & Operations Peter Wright
Fundraising Consultant Paul Hudson
Outreach & Evaluation Consultant Bec Britain

Honorary Chair – Friends of LMP Christine Robson

MARKETING

Senior Marketing & PR Manager Anna Bennett
Marketing and Development Coordinator Bethany Penny
Digital Marketing Manager Charles Lewis

EVENTS

Royal Event Manager Rachel Rae
Freelance Events Producer Sophie Branscombe

FINANCE

Bookkeeper Debbie Charles

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biographies

Jess Gillam
saxophone

Jess Gillam is a celebrated saxophonist and presenter. With her electrifying performances, vibrant stage presence and magnetic personality, the ‘uniquely mercurial’ (The Times) Jess has been invited to play on the world’s major stages since becoming the youngest ever soloist to perform at the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, London. Equally at home behind the microphone, Jess’ award-winning weekly show, This Classical Life, on BBC Radio 3 is now in its seventh season.

Jess is passionate about broadening the repertoire for the saxophone, especially in the classical sphere. Recent commissions include Glasslands by Anna Clyne premiered with the Detroit Symphony. Other new works include Dani Howard’s Saxophone Concerto, first heard with Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and Karl Jenkins’s Stravaganza performed to a sold-out BBC Proms audience. Jess held the position of Associate Artist of the Royal Albert Hall until 2025 and was an Artistic Partner of Manchester Camerata.

Jess’ concerto appearances have included performances with the BBC orchestras, DSO Berlin, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Gothenburg, Iceland, Lahti, London, NDR Elbphilharmonie and Sydney Symphony Orchestra as well as the London, Royal Liverpool and Munich Philharmonic, among others. Further afield, concerto highlights in the US have included the Houston Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra; she will debut with the Lincoln Center Festival Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra in the summer of 2025.

On the recital stage, Jess is seen performing across Europe, the US and beyond. As a former ECHO Rising Star , Jess has appeared throughout Europe’s most prestigious concert halls, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Wiener Konzerthaus, Konzerthuset Stockholm and Barcelona’s Palau de le Musica. An exclusive recording artist with Decca Classics, Jess is the first and only saxophonist to be signed to the major label. Both her albums have reached No. 1 in the UK Classical Music Charts and her debut album, Rise, was listed in The Times’ Top 100 albums of 2019. Alongside her weekly Radio 3 show, Jess has presented on BBC Radio 2, co-hosted a mini-series on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and presented at the BBC Proms and BBC Young Musician of the Year.

Jess loves collaboration and in 2020, she formed her band, the Jess Gillam Ensemble. Their bold, uplifting and open-minded approach is rooted in classical music but takes inspiration from different musical worlds. Since their launch, the ensemble has performed throughout the UK and Europe to multiple sold-out audiences at venues and festivals including the Wigmore Hall, Latitude Festival, Mozartfest Augsburg and Bath Festival.

In 2016, Jess Gillam made history after becoming the first saxophonist to reach the Finals of BBC Young Musician of the Year. She has been the recipient of a Classic BRIT Award, a The Times Breakthrough Award nominee and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2021 for Services to Music. Returning to her roots in Ulverston in Cumbria, Jess continues to promote her own concert series in her hometown, inviting internationally renowned artists, a series she founded at age 12. She is a patron for Young Sounds UK, Music in Secondary Schools Trust, the London Music Fund and is a member of the Council of the Royal Philharmonic Society.

Jonathan Bloxham
Conductor in Residence and Artistic Advisor

British conductor Jonathan Bloxham was appointed Music Director of the Luzerner Theater in 2023, having debuted there in 2022 with Bluebeard’s Castle. After achieving great success last season with acclaimed new productions of La Bohème (“the opera highlight of the season”, Luzerner Zeitung), I Capuleti e I Montecchi and Dido and Aeneas, in 24/25 Bloxham conducts Idomeneo, Fledermaus, Luisa Miller and Hansel and Gretel. Bloxham made his Glyndebourne Festival debut in 2021, conducting Luisa Miller with the London Philharmonic. In the same year he conducted Glyndebourne Touring Opera’s production of Don Pasquale, having performed Rigoletto with the orchestra in 2019.

After first debuting with the orchestra in 2020 this season Bloxham begins his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie following in the footsteps of Andris Nelsons and Jonothan Heyward, and conducting concerts on two German tours as well as in their subscription season in Herford. In 2021 he recorded a CD of Strauss and Franck with the orchestra, described as “irresistible” by Musicweb International.

Conductor in Residence and Artistic Advisor of the London Mozart Players since 2022, Bloxham continues his close relationship with the orchestra this season, leading their concert series at St Martin-in-the-Fields and Fairfield Halls, and on a four-concert Swiss tour. Last season they celebrated the orchestra’s 75th birthday with a recreation of Mozart’s 1783 Vienna concert, and marked Croydon’s year as Borough of Culture with ambitious multi-disciplinary community projects.

Guest highlights of the past couple of seasons have included London Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Tokyo Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteumorchester, Halle Orchestra, BBC Symphony, Belgian National, Residentie Orkest, Tonkuenstlerorchester Wien at the Grafenegg Festival, Bonn Beethovenorchester, Trondheim Symphony and Philharmonic Brass (musicians from Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras) – many of these on multiple occasions. This season he returns to the BBC Symphony to conduct Wagner and Charles Ives, conducts the BBC Philharmonic in an opera gala, and debuts at the Enescu Festival with the Romanian National Radio Orchestra.

In 2024 Bloxham released a recording of Bach’s Keyboard Concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Tianqi Du, which reached number one on the Apple Classical Top 100 global chart. He has also recorded works by Bruce Broughton with the London Symphony Orchestra (2024), as well as discs for future release with the BBC Scottish Symphony (2022) and London Mozart Players (2023).

Bloxham’s conducting career was launched in 2016 when he took up the Assistant Conductor position at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Mirga Grazynte-Tyla. Before taking up conducting he enjoyed a prolific career as a cellist, performing regularly at the Wigmore Hall and across Europe, making his concerto debut at the Berlin Philharmonie in 2012. He learnt cello at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Royal College of Music and then at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Master’s), and later took conducting studies with Sian Edwards, Michael Seal, Nicolas Pasquet and Paavo Järvi.

For the past 16 years Bloxham has been Artistic Director of the Northern Chords Festival based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, commissioning new works from young composers such as Vlad Maistorovici, Jack Sheen and Freya Waley Cohen. He returns to the Festival in 2025.

Ruth Rogers
leader

Ruth Rogers studied with Itzhak Rashkovsky and Herman Krebbers. Described as “the finest of the younger generation of violinists” (Musical Opinion) and hailed by the Guardian as “superb”, Ruth is in demand as soloist, leader, and chamber musician. She was awarded the Tagore Gold Medal – the Royal College of Music’s highest accolade. She appears regularly at such prestigious venues as The Wigmore Hall with Aquinas Piano Trio and has made many recordings as part of that ensemble, including recent releases by Naxos which have been very well received by the critics.

Ruth was appointed as Leader of the London Mozart Players in 2015 and Leader of the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra in 2022. She worked as Co-Leader of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 2008 until 2012 and appears as a guest leader of many other major orchestras including the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Ruth has played to orphans, landmine victims and malaria patients in refugee camps on the Thailand-Burma border.