Kim Ashton

After graduating from Cambridge University’s Pembroke College in 2004 with a prize-winning double-starred first in music, Kim Ashton almost went to the Royal Academy to study the oboe. Instead, after an internship with leading Swedish composer Fredrik Hogberg, and a residency conducting the National Symphony Orchestra of Myanmar he returned to live in Cambridge, supervising and more recently lecturing at the University whilst writing his PhD in composition at King’s College London under the supervision of Silvina Milstein and George Benjamin. His pieces have been performed at the Nyland (Sweden), Athelas (Copenhagen), Soundwave, Sampler and Spitalfields festivals. The premiere of his first chamber opera was deemed ‘one of the most exciting new music events in Cambridge for twenty years’, while his second (The boy the forest and the desert), in a recent revival at The Arcola Theatre’s Grimeborn Festival, was thought ‘miraculous’ by a leading musicologist. Commissions have included a song for Juliet Fraser of EXAUDI with funds from the RVW Trust and Britten-Pears Foundation, and a solo oboe piece for Professor Melanie Ragge (RAM). His recorder piece DOTS, performed at King’s Place, was recently recorded as part of a Nonclassical label CD which was voted No.1 Best Classical Album 2010 in Chicago TimeOut. A participant in a number of workshops organised by the European Network of Opera Academies, Kim recently conducted his own The boy the forest and the desert at London’s Grimeborn Opera Festival, and is currently at work on his third ‘opera’, Tonseisha, already performed in part at the Dinefwr Literary Festival and at London’s Cockpit Theatre. Upcoming highlights include a performance of his orchestral song o lotus estala by the Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, and another CD release, this time of Lontano playing his ensemble piece Axial on the LORELT label. http://kimbashton.wordpress.com