The Hallé with Stephen Bell and Jess Gillam (saxophone)

The brilliant young British saxophonist Jess Gillam takes centre stage in our Anglo-American season finale, beginning with Aaron Copland’s suite from his 1938 ballet, Billy the Kid. Drawing on cowboy tunes and American folk songs it paints a vivid picture of the wild west, complete with open prairies and a tense, rapid-firing shoot out. John Williams’s alto sax suite, Escapades, evokes another period in American history, adapting his score to the 1960s era movie Catch me if you can, and evoking its progressive jazz ambience in a cool-talking exchange between soloist and orchestra.

Jess switches to soprano sax for John Harle’s Briggflatts, inspired by Basil Bunting’s epic autobiographical poem of 1966. The three-movement suite emerged from Harle’s improvisations around Bunting’s sonorous verse and also conveys the scenic atmosphere of the poem’s locations in Jess’s native Cumbria. Crossing the pond for the concert’s finale, Leonard Bernstein’s irresistible sequence of Latin- and Jazz-infused dances from West Side Story has an equally spectacular encore in John Adams’ A short ride in a fast machine. This adrenalin-pumping musical road trip leaves everything in its wake as the Hallé opens up the throttle.

Free pre-concert talk, 6.20pm in the auditorium: Neil Bennison, Music Programme Manager for the Royal Concert Hall, introduces the 2022-2023 season