Jess Gillam, who turns 21 this year, won the Classic Brit Award and was the first saxophonist in the history of the BBC Young Musician competition to reach the final. She is a passionate and dedicated player of her instrument. She was only 15 when she held a TEDx talk on the saxophone, which has now been watched more than 100,000 times on YouTube. She grew up in the Cumbrian town of Ulverstone in the north-east of England. The young musician with a suggestive performance style has already signed an exclusive contract with the Decca Classics record label. It is part of her musical credo that she wishes to reform the concert experience: she would like, for example, for the audience to be allowed to dance, clap and cry out between movements - she believes these instinctive reactions are expressions of the joy of music. At her Rising Stars debut, she will perform works from several 20th- and 21st- century composers - and of course arrangements of compositions originally written for oboe. Another Brit, Edmund Finnis, has been commissioned by ECHO to write a new piece for Jess Gillam. Top music magazines have used words like 'magical', 'iridescent', 'remarkable' and 'ethereally beautiful' to describe his pieces.

Nominated for the Rising Stars programme by: Sage Gateshead

Presented by: Müpa Budapest