Nicholas Ashton
Nicholas Ashton was educated at Chetham's School, RNCM, at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Frankfurt and the Conservatoire supèrieur de musique, Geneva. His teachers were Renna Kellaway and Joachim Volkmann and he received coaching from Vlado Perlemuter, Jorge Bolet and Joaquin Achucarro, Pierre Laurent Aimard; and chamber music coaching from Roger Raphael, Emmanuel Hurwitz, Cecil Aronowitz and Lamar Crowson.
Following a successful early career as a soloist, he worked as a teacher, translator and in artist management before resuming performing after encouragement from Murray Perahia, for whom he played at the Centre for Advanced Studies Aldeburgh in 1993, and Menahem Pressler at Banff Center for the Arts, Canada, in 1996.
A critically acclaimed debut at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall led to a commercial live disc of the recital in 1996 and increasing offers to play both in the UK and in Germany, where he has been a regular guest artist of the Hamburg Chamber Music Society for fifteen years since 2000. Examples of recitals and masterclasses include: in the USA (Central Washington University, 2005; University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2009), Finland (Tampere University of the Applied Sciences 2009, 2010), Italy (the Amice della Musica Series in Udine, 2013) at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow (2000 to 2015), RNCM and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Nicholas has recorded many times for the BBC, on West German NDR 4, Bayern 4, Radio Swisse Romande, Radio New Zealand and in the USA. His repertoire extends to some 25 concerti, solo repertoire ranging from the early French Clavecin School to the contemporary, a wide range of chamber music and as an accompanist.
In 2008, a première recording for Delphian Records of the complete piano works by Robert Crawford, including his Piano Quintet, received international praise in the media.
Nicholas has an increasing interest in performing contemporary and rare repertoire and recordings of contemporary two piano repertoire (including works by Edward Harper, Lyell Cresswell, Nigel Osborne, Robert Crawford, Kenneth Leighton, Drew Hammond, Jane Stanley, Stephen Pratt) with the Lithuanian pianist, Lauryna Sableviciute; the complete works for two pianos and piano duet by Mozart with the German pianist Franck-Thomas Link (2020); and a vinyl recording, entitled Wasserklavier, of solo repertoire by Ravel, Debussy, Ligeti and Berio (Copperfly), 2019, are in preparation.
Nicholas Ashton