Live Jess Gillam & Shostakovich Eight Thu 3 – Sat 5 April

Jonathon Heyward is forging a career as one of the most exciting conductors on the international scene. He currently serves as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, having made his debut with BSO in March 2022 in three performances that included the first-ever performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15. From summer 2024, Jonathon will become Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director of Lincoln Center’s Summer Orchestra. This appointment follows a highly acclaimed Lincoln Center debut with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in summer 2022, as part of their Summer for the City festival.

Currently in his fourth year as Chief Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, in summer 2021, Jonathon took part in an intense, two-week residency with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain which led to a highly acclaimed BBC Proms debut. According to The Guardian, Jonathon delivered “a fast and fearless performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, in which loud chords exploded, repeating like fireworks in the hall’s dome, and the quietest passages barely registered. It was exuberant, exhilarating stuff.”

Jonathon’s recent and future guest conducting highlights in the United Kingdom include debuts and re-invitations with the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, The Hallé in Manchester, National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. In continental Europe, amongst Jonathon’s recent and forthcoming debuts are collaborations with the Castilla y León Symphony, Galicia Symphony, Danish National Symphony, Basel Symphony, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Brussels Philharmonic, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Hamburg Symphony and MDR-Leipzig Symphony.

In 2021, Jonathon made his Wolf Trap debut conducting the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC, and in 2023 he made his debut with the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival. Further significant highlights in the United States include collaborations with the New York Philharmonic; the Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, Seattle, and St Louis symphonies; and the Minnesota Orchestra.

Equally at home on the opera stage, Jonathon recently made his Royal Opera House debut with Hannah Kendall’s Knife of Dawn, having also conducted a Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as the world premiere of Giorgio Battistelli’s new opera, Wake, in a production by Graham Vick for the Birmingham Opera Company.

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Jonathon began his musical training as a cellist at the age of ten and started conducting while still at school. He studied conducting at the Boston Conservatory of Music, where he became assistant conductor of the prestigious institution’s opera department and of the Boston Opera Collaborative, and he received postgraduate lessons from Sian Edwards at London’s Royal Academy of Music. Before leaving the Academy, he was appointed assistant conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, where he was mentored by Sir Mark Elder, and became Music Director of the Hallé Youth Orchestra. In 2023, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music; an honour reserved for Academy alumni.

Jonathon’s commitment to education and community outreach work deepened during his three years with the Hallé and has flourished since he arrived in post as Chief Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in January 2021. He is equally committed to including new music within his imaginative concert programs.

See Jonathon Heyward conduct Shostakovich Symphony No8 with the RSNO on 3, 4 and 5 April 2025.

Jess Gillam is celebrated as a leading figure of the saxophone. With her electrifying performances, vibrant stage presence and magnetic personality, the ‘uniquely mercurial’ (The Times) Jess Gillam 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 and was hailed for her ‘effortless virtuosity and limitless expressiveness’ (Arts Desk). Equally at home behind the microphone, Gillam has shattered glass ceilings as the youngest ever presenter for BBC Radio 3 with her award-winning weekly show, This Classical Life.

Passionate about broadening the repertoire for the saxophone, Jess Gillam gives the premieres of various works in the current and forthcoming seasons; this includes Glasslands by Anna Clyne (co-commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfonica de Castilla y León, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, NAC Orchestra Ottawa and Naples Philharmonic). Further premieres include the world premiere of Dani Howard’s Saxophone Concerto with London Chamber Orchestra and the UK premiere of Karl Jenkins’ Stravaganza with BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Gillam is Artist in Focus with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and The Glasshouse International Centre for Music for the 2023/24 season and continues to be Associate Artist of the Royal Albert Hall and Artistic Partner with the Manchester Camerata.

Highlights of Gillam’s concerto appearances have included performances with the BBC, DSO Berlin, Gothenburg, Iceland, Lahti and London Symphony Orchestras as well as the London, Royal Liverpool and Munich Philharmonics, among others. Further afield, concerto highlights in the US have included the Houston Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra. This season sees Gillam debut with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra as well as return to the NDR Elbphilharmonieorchester, performing James MacMillan’s Saxophone Concerto under Marin Alsop. She also tours with the Manchester Camerata (including a debut performance at the Enescu Festival) and appears with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, The Hallé and BBC Concert Orchestra.

On the recital stage, Jess Gillam is seen performing across Europe, the US and beyond. As an ECHO Rising Star in 2022/23 season, Gillam has appeared throughout Europe’s most prestigious concert halls, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw (where she will return in June 2024), Wiener Konzerthaus, Konzerthuset Stockholm and Barcelona’s Palau de le Musica. She has also performed recitals at the Kissinger Sommer, Schleswig-Holstein and Heidelberger Frühling music festivals. Following her Carnegie Hall debut in the 2022/23 season and recital at the Aspen Music Festival, she returns to the US this season and makes her Boston Celebrity Series debut.

Jess Gillam loves to collaborate and bring people together to enjoy sparky and energetic performances. She formed her band, the Jess Gillam Ensemble, in 2019. Their bold, uplifting and open-minded approach is rooted in classical music but takes inspiration from different musical worlds. Gillam’s carefully curated programmes provide a new spin on C.P.E. Bach, groove in the music of John Harle, Anna Meredith and Barbara Thompson as well as folk infusions and soaring melodies through works by Sakamoto, J.S. Bach and Björk. Since their launch, the ensemble released their chart-topping album, TIME, and have performed throughout the UK and Europe to largely sold-out audiences at venues and festivals including the Wigmore Hall, Latitude Festival, Mozartfest Augsburg, and the Bath Festival.

Alongside her performance work, Gillam is a keen TV and Radio presenter. Her weekly show on BBC Radio 3, This Classical Life, is in its fifth season and has garnered high praise from The Guardian who wrote: ‘There are many more established presenters who lack Gillam’s warmth and impressive ability’. In 2020, This Classical Life was awarded the ARIA Award for Best Specialist Music Show. As a guest presenter, Gillam has worked for BBC Radio 2, co-hosted on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and presented at the BBC Proms and BBC Young Musician of the Year.

As an exclusive recording artist with Decca Classics, Jess Gillam 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. Her second album, TIME, was released to critical acclaim in 2020; ‘Gillam’s agile soprano saxophone soars impressively… before gliding gracefully in and around a hive of textural activity that builds up to a frenetic ending’ (Gramophone on her recording of Michael Nyman Where the Bee Dances).

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, Gillam 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 Awards for Young Musicians, Music in Secondary Schools Trust, the London Music Fund and is a member of the Council of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Gillam is a Vandoren UK Artist and became the youngest ever endorsee for Yanagisawa Saxophones aged just 13.

See Jess Gillam perform Anna Clyne’s Glasslands with the RSNO on 3, 4 and 5 April 2025.