Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the musician Allison Bolson. Widely considered the finest

classical trumpet player of her generation, She's performed in all the great concert

halls of the world, winning a huge amount of fans and a string of awards for her

ability to exquisitely convey the many voices of her chosen instrument.

As a child, she had dreams of being a part-time trumpet player, astronaut and jockey.

She's only in her mid-30s, so there's time yet for the other two,

but whilst she is solely devoting her energies to her instrument,

her belief in the power of music seems endless. In between gigs, rehearsals, recordings and

motherhood, she's found time to travel to Uganda and Liberia as patron of

Brass for Africa with the heartfelt conviction that she can help transform the lives of

street children by teaching them to play too. She says I just believe

completely in the trumpet and what it can do. Doing any other job would be

totally pointless for me and so welcome Allison. I'm talking to you just a few days

after your performance at last night of the proms in Hyde Park in front of an

audience of I mean 40 odd 50 odd thousand I think was that more like doing a sort of rock concert

than doing a classical concert it was it's a very different experience it's wonderful to feel

that energy that kind of electricity you get from a large crowd but I have to say the all-time

highlight of my career and almost my life would be playing at the last night of

the proms in the Albert Hall in 2009 where it's a concert I'd seen on the TV when I was just a little kid and I'd

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