Fantasia Orchestra with Jess Gillam: Electric Currents, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham | 16 February 2026 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Ruff

Photo credit: Alex Rimell.

Fantasia Orchestra with Jess Gillam: Electric Currents

Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham | 16 February 2026,

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review: William Ruff.

“An explosion of joyful energy.”

This was Jess Gillam’s seventh concert in Nottingham in seven years.  If you know any astrologers (or Harry Potter fans), they’ll be keen to tell you that seven is one of the most magic of numbers.  This time she teamed up with Fantasia Orchestra, making its debut in the city and clearly no slouches themselves when it comes to conjuring up musical magic. 

The enthusiasm of the performers was palpable from the outset.  Conductor Tom Fetherstonhaugh gave the audience and the venue a verbal hug before suggesting that the concert’s unifying principle was joyful energy through centuries and styles.  And the variety was dizzying: Baroque virtuosity, folk traditions, super-charged jazz and cutting-edge contemporary innovation.  No wonder the evening was called ‘Electric Currents’: you could hear the air crackling even before they started.

The first item on the menu was the Prelude from Bach’s 3rd Partita, arranged for solo violin and orchestra.  Samuel Staples was the soloist in a performance which didn’t just dazzle but which also firmly nailed the concert’s colours to the mast.  This was high-octane playing, a sort of perpetual motion of cascading runs, technical wizardry and infectious energy, a virtuosic blend of the ancient and the modern.  The orchestra provided minutely detailed support, their sharply defined accents as impressive as the delicacy with which they wove a shimmering haze around the soloist.

And then it was Jess Gillam’s turn.  She is a force of Nature, entering the concert platform more like a controlled explosion in a black and gold outfit which looked as if it had been on charge all day.  CPE Bach’s A Minor Flute Concerto was given a thoroughly modern make-over, bursting with dynamic contrasts, unpredictable rhythms and breakneck dialogue between soloist and ensemble.  When Jess performs it’s not just your ears that have to keep up with the way she packs each micro-second with musical detail; your eyes are similarly mesmerised by the way she dances around the stage, filling the space with personality as well as a technique which seemingly dispenses with the need to breathe.  Tom Fetherstonhaugh’s control of the orchestra was impressive too: stylish, well-balanced and with textures always transparent.

James MacMillan’s Saxophone Concerto pushes music into previously uncharted regions.  It opens in the relatively familiar territory of a Scottish dance medley (march, strathspey, reel) but then breaks loose with the solo saxophone’s sharp, boisterous rhythms pitted against jabbing chords in the orchestra.  In the slow movement Jess Gillam had to assume the role of a cantor leading a congregation with a plaintive, Gaelic-tinged melodic line before a magical ending of wispy fragments accompanied by delicate pizzicato from the orchestra.

The rest of the programme included a vast range of music in which Jess conjured an almost impossible range of colour and expression from her instrument: Sidney Bechet’s PetiteFleur, Danald Grant’s Bha la eile ann, Kate Bush’s Jig of Life, the traditional Swallowtail Jig and Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint.  The set finished with RANT!, a piece specially written for her by her teacher and mentor John Harle and one which channels the exuberance of the folk music of Jess’s native Cumbria.  Its blend of driving rhythms, bold melodies and fusion of classical techniques (stretched almost to breaking point) with the raw energy of folk music makes it a wildly exciting expression of Jess’s personality.  And it expressed what made this partnership of Fantasia Orchestra, its conductor Tom Fetherstonhaugh and the charismatic Jess Gillam such a triumph.

Fantasia Orchestra

Jess Gillam (saxophones)

Tom Fetherstonhaugh (conductor)