Trumpeter Alison Balsom is not your typical classical music prodigy. She's been listening to Dizzy Gillespie since the age of seven , and hopes to someday work with Eminem. Ahead of a series of performances next week with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, she talks to Arminta Wallace

ALISON BALSOM is a publicist’s dream. She is – in no particular order – a girl, a trumpeter and drop-dead gorgeous. On the other hand, she’s also a publicist’s nightmare. Imagine a client who, having won the award for Best Female Artist at the Classical Brits, announces that, for her next trick, she’s going off to take part in the Fastnet Yacht Race and she’ll see you in a couple of months – if she doesn’t drown or disappear or get stuck under a hull somewhere in the meantime.

“My agent worries about me,” she admits. “I love going skiing, and I do loads of things that could be conceived as dangerous. But they can’t stop you living your life – and I don’t think they would want to, either. That’s part of my personality, and they’re things that I do quite frequently. Anyway, crossing the road is dangerous.”

Not as dangerous as the Fastnet Yacht Race, one would have thought. But as it turns out, Balsom had to retire from this year’s race because she injured her shoulder in a practice race. “It was disappointing,” she says. “Our team was amazing. They did really well; they came sixth in their class.”

This month, Balsom is coming to Limerick, Cork and Dublin to perform, with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, one of the most appealing musical programmes you’re likely to come across this year. It’s built around the two trumpet concertos – by Haydn and Hummel – which she recorded recently for EMI on a sparkling disc whose success undoubtedly contributed to her triumph at the Classical Brits.

She’s sure to cut a dash with a programme which will, she says, allow her to show off all sides of the trumpet in a single evening. Haydn, the classical side, Gershwin, the jazzy side and Piazzolla, the virtuoso side. “And the fanfares, which have been written specially by young composers, are heroic and brilliant – which is what people really associate with the trumpet.”

If Balsom can be said to have a musical mission, this is it. To the untrained eye, it’s not obvious how the trumpet can be – for example – romantic. “People do think of the trumpet as a brutish, loud, masculine instrument – which it doesn’t have to be,” she says. “You can play musical lines any way you want. You can play in a lyrical way. You can play in a singing way. And if the music is good, and it’s romantic music, then why can you not do it on the trumpet? Anyway, think of the greatest jazz musicians,” she adds. “The trumpet is a really moody, subtle instrument in the hands of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie and all those people.”

Balsom’s playing style reflects the variety of musical influences to be found in her store cupboard; she has been listening to Dizzy Gillespie, for instance, since the age of seven. So while her technique and virtuosity place her firmly in the classical mode, her gestures aren’t always strictly ballroom. At times, for instance, she just can’t resist having a bit of a boogie.

How did she get interested in jazz at such a young age? “It was a bit of an accident, really. I had the chance to play a trumpet at school, and I was just kind of just curious to see what it was all about. And then my mum got a cassette from the library and said, ‘Listen to this trumpet player’.”

The trumpeter was Dizzy Gillespie, and his work inspired Balsom not only to continue with her trumpet lessons but to join a local brass band.

As a seven-year-old – and presumably, unless she has changed beyond recognition, a pretty, girly seven-year-old – did she feel isolated in what has traditionally been an overwhelmingly male environment? “No, actually,” she says. “And it’s funny you should mention that, because I just bumped into this girl yesterday on the train. She started when she was about seven as well, and we grew up together, really. She’s now a professional trombone player. When I met her yesterday, she was on her way back from Switzerland playing with the LSO, and I was on my way back from Germany. We always had great camaraderie. I never felt like I was the only girl doing it.”

Is there some physical feature which would mitigate against a woman playing taking up the trumpet? Does Balsom, for instance, have to work hard at breathing exercises?

“Of course I do – but no more than a man does,” she says. “It’s much more about technique than it is about the size of the lungs. Just like you need to be strong to be a ballet dancer, but you don’t need to be a bodybuilder. You just need to have cool strength. So it’s not harder for a woman.

“Not physically, anyhow – although you could argue that it’s harder in other ways because of the prejudices against being a woman trumpeter.”

And then there are the pluses. In Balsom's case, this means following the trusty style adage "if you've got it, flaunt it – and then some". People are still talking about the dress she wore to the Classical Brits in May, which was – shock, horror – short. (Actually it was spectacularlyshort).

For her Irish tour, though, she’s playing it safe. “I always have to feel that I love the dress I’m wearing. It does help give me confidence when I walk out on stage for the first time,” she says. “Most probably, I’ll be wearing a dress by the American designer Nicole Miller. I love her clothes and they work really well on stage. Also, they’re fantastic for travelling because they’re meant to be crumpled.”

But the music is the most important thing. “I love the fact that the Haydn and the Hummel have been programmed together, which doesn’t happen that often. They have a lot of similarities, not least that they’re both from the classical period and they’re both in the same key. But the Hummel concerto is really quite romantic, and it takes all the ideas which were introduced by Haydn – for example, the idea that the trumpet could, for the first time, play all the notes of the scale – and really, really extends them. The way that the trumpet is used in this kind of romantic way – much more like a violin – is a real stepping-stone in the progression of the instrument.”

The next stepping-stone for Balsom is her involvement with the charity War Child. “I think I might be the first classical ambassador they’ve had since Pavarotti – and I really am excited about it because they have this infrastructure where they put on concerts to raise money. So I can do something really helpful for them.”

She’s organising a big gig for November which will see classical artists such as Barry Douglas and Colin Currie on the same bill as pop acts. “It will be a collaboration in the best sense. No watering down, but a kind of juxtaposition of the two genres.”

This particular concert, she notes with a touch of regret, won’t involve the artist she’d really like to work with – the boy Eminem.

“Maybe next time,” she says. Why Eminem? “I think he’s a great artist. He’s so unselfconscious in what he does: he doesn’t do it to please his audiences, or his record label, or the masses, or anything. He just does something that is genuinely how he wants to perform and what he wants to say. And I think that goes across all genres. It’s about doing the best you can for yourself with conviction and without compromising.”

Alison Balsom performs with the ICO, conducted by Gerard Korsten, next Thursday (Limerick), Saturday (Dublin) and Sunday (Cork)