What's Up?
I’m very excited to announce my new single ‘Transit of Venus’, out now! The piece is originally by Joby Talbot who you might know as the composer of the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) film soundtrack.
The piece is from a project called ‘Once Around the Sun’ which is inspired by the year long cycle of the transit of the earth around the sun, and Joby composed one piece a month for the project. I was first introduced to this piece by my Dad who loves Joby Talbot’s music and its ethereal beauty has inspired me ever since!
We recorded Transit of Venus in RAK Studios on day two of the three-day recording process. Other tracks recorded that day include the Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Björk pieces which I can’t wait for you to hear!
Life & Work
Bio:
After performing at the prestigious Last Night of the Proms in 2018 and having her performance described as “the indisputable highlight” by BBC News, Jess continues to grow her international career. This season, she will perform at the Last Night of the BBC Proms Japan, with the Minnesota Orchestra, at the Lucerne Festival, with Deutsches Symphony Orchester Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. She also continues to perform throughout the UK in recital as well as with the Hallé, Manchester Camerata and the European Union Chamber Orchestra.
Jess is the first ever saxophonist to be signed to Decca Classics and recently released her debut album “Rise”, which shot to No.1 in the Official UK Classical Charts. Featuring a selection of her favourite pieces ranging from Marcello and Shostakovich to David Bowie and Kate Bush, it was highly celebrated and received rave reviews.
She is also a presenter on TV and Radio. She became the youngest ever presenter for BBC Radio 3 and hosts her own weekly show called “This Classical Life” in which she talks to musical friends and colleagues about the music that inspires them. The show has been very well received by audiences and critics alike, with The Guardian stating “there are many more established presenters who lack Gillam’s warmth and impressive ability”. She also presented five BBC Proms live on television alongside Katie Derham and Tom Service.
Jess has been the recipient of a Classic BRIT Award (in the Sound of Classical Poll), was the first ever saxophonist to reach the final of BBC Young Musician of the Year, and in 2019, performed live at the BAFTAs (British Academy of Film and Television Awards) to millions of viewers at home.
A free spirit in style and character, Jess is a passionate advocate for the power of music in society, often combining her concert engagements with educational and social projects. She is a patron for Awards for Young Musicians and a trustee for the newly formed HarrisonParrott Foundation, working towards full inclusivity of all ethnicities, genders, disabilities and social backgrounds with equal access to the arts.
Jess studies with acclaimed saxophonist and composer John Harle. She is a Vandoren UK Artist and became the youngest ever endorsee for Yanagisawa Saxophones aged just 13. She is a lover of live music and continues to promote her own concert series, bringing international talent to her hometown of Ulverston.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
General Management:
HarrisonParrott and Polyarts
5-6 Albion Court
Albion Place
London
W6 0QT
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Vibrant and assured, her playing showed exquisite control of colour, volume and timbre.”
Evening Standard (Last Night of the Proms, September 2018)
“Jess Gillam….. lighting up the hall with her seemingly effortless virtuosity and limitless expressiveness. Gillam is all set for stardom: to listen is to love her.”
Artsdesk
“…Pedro Iturralde’s Pequeña Czarda, the ‘Brazileira’ from Milhaud’s Scaramouche and the traditional Russian song ‘Dark eyes’ contain by-now trademark Gillam isms – lively characterisation combined with technical brilliance.”
GRAMOPHONE (RISE review)
“…she’s great, fantastically virtuosic when required but always with the music at heart, and she is unbelievably shapely, sensitive and tender in slower numbers – deeply affecting in fact…but make no mistake: Jess herself is ★★★★★”
Classical Source (RISE review)
“Saxophonist Jess Gillam steals the show.”
“She may only be 20 years old, but saxophonist Jess Gillam was the indisputable highlight of the Last Night of the Proms.”
BBC News (Last Night of the Proms, September 2018)
“Britain’s next top musician – delete the ‘next’, she is a star already!”
AZ BADENER TAGBLATT (September 2018)
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).