Composers' Workshop: Kim Ashton

Composer, conductor, teacher, gardener, baroque oboist. In Kim Ashton's music zen calm meets zen violence, while the sounds of nature mix with the sweet strains of hardcore modernism. After graduating from Cambridge with a prize-winning double-starred first in music, Kim won a scholarship to study oboe at the Royal Academy of Music. However, after a residency conducting the National Symphony Orchestra of Myanmar, composition took over and in 2014 he was awarded his PhD in composition at King’s College London (where he studied with Silvina Milstein and George Benjamin). Recent work includes pieces for the OAE, the LSO, and Ensemble InterContemporain, while his music theatre piece Tonseisha was performed at this summer’s Tete a Tete Festival with Arts Council funding. 

The Faculty’s series of Composers’ Workshops is open to students of all years of the undergraduate music course as well as masters and doctoral students, indeed anyone with an interest in the creation of new music. Because space is limited, please email John Hopkins (jeh40@cam.ac.uk) if you are not a Faculty member and wish to attend.