Matthew Gee (trombone)
François Killian (piano)

Matthew Gee is making a name for himself as one of the freshest and most imaginative performers on the current scene. He maintains a strong desire to relinquish trombone playing from its stereotype and illuminate the wider public as to the beauty and terror of this misunderstood instrument. Matthew is a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Chairman of the British Trombone Society and principal trombone with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and has performed with some of the finest orchestras and chamber ensembles in the world, including the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. For Berlioz, writing in 1844, the trombone was associated with a clear symbolic dichotomy, representing at times the heavenly, sacred and numinous, but at others the hellish, profane and phenomenal. But these characteristics have been dissolved over the centuries, and we're left with an instrument sorely misunderstood. This recording highlights these strengths by pairing works, swiftly alternating between 20th-century showpieces and 19th-century songs, thus resurrecting the long-lost Jekyll and Hyde character of the solo trombone.