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"For once a talented performer fully identified with the music he was playing; it was impossible to imagine a more committed, sympathetic interpretation

(The Age, Melbourne)

 

Known for his theatricality and "flawlessly fahsioned style and technique" (The West Australian), Ashley William Smith has emerged as one of Australia’s most exciting young musicians. The current Music Council of Australia Freedman Fellow and winner of an ABC Symphony International Young Performer Award, Ashley has been identified as a ‘rising star’ by the world's leading clarinet manufacturer, and is a Buffet-Crampon Artist.

 

Born in Perth, Australia, in 1984, Ashley has presented major public recitals throughout Australia and the east coast of the USA. He has appeared as a soloist with the Tasmanian and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, Orchestra Victoria and the Orchestra of the Australian National Academy of Music. Ashley’s dedication to the promotion of new music has seen him perform numerous Australian premieres, especially those of works by Jorg Widmann and Magnus Lindberg. His Melbourne premiere of the Lindberg Concerto was ranked amongst The Age Newspaper's Top 5 Classical Performances 2010. Other career highlights include performing the Lindberg Clarinet Quintet at the gala concert of the World Congress of Chamber Music Competitions and recitals of music by Australian composers in New York and Washington D.C.

 

Ashley has future performances scheduled in the USA, Canada and Australia with his duo partner, Australian pianist Aura Go. In 2013 Ashley appear at venues including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Melbourne Rectial Centre and with organisations including the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Centre, the Australian String Quartet and  Melbourne's Syzygy Ensemble.

 

Ashley graduated from the University of Western Australia with First Class Honours and prizes including the Lady Callaway Medal, the Edith Cowan Prize. In addition he was awarded the Sir Harold Bailey Award as the most outstanding graduate of the UWA Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and was nominated for the J.A. Wood Prize, the University's most prestigious honour. Ashley is also an alumnus of the Australian National Academy of Music and in 2010 was an Academy Fellow. In 2009 he won both the jury and audience prizes at the Academy's Concerto Competition and in 2010 was awarded the inaugural Harold Mitchell Fellowship. He completed his Master of Music on a full tuition scholarship at Yale University in 2013 where he was awarded the Thomas Nyfenger Prize as the most outstanding woodwind student. Ashley is the Yale School of Music's current nominee for the prestigious Arthur Foote Prize. Most recently, Ashley was named the 2012 Music Council of Australia Freedman Fellow and will subsequently pursue an international recital tour and study program in 2013.


 

 

 

 

 

 


DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.