University News Last updated 03 November 2022
Just weeks after winning the 2022 BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition, percussionist Jordan Ashman will perform in a concert on Sunday 13 November at the Royal Spa Centre Leamington.
First-year BMus student Jordan Ashman performed the Percussion Concerto by American composer Jennifer Higdon with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall to win the competition. He is only the third percussionist to do so in over 45 years.
He takes to the stage again in Leamington as part of a programme of three brass bands to mark Remembrance Sunday and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Jordan will play a solo of ‘Over the Rainbow’ on marimba, as well as with the bands.
Headed by the Tredegar Band, which played in two BBC Proms this summer, the concert also features the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Brass Band conducted by Ian Porthouse, and Youth Brass 2000 with conductor Chris Jeans.
The concert has works by Berlioz and Strauss as well as Vaughan Williams, and includes songs from the Great War by Bruce Fraser. At the end massed bands will play ‘Lest We Forget’ by Christopher Bond.
Festival Director Richard Phillips said: “Last year Leamington Music put on a very successful evening at the Royal Spa Centre which we called Brass Explosion. It featured the Conservatoire Band and the Shirley Band. Leamington Music is also taking a brass group from the Conservatoire into schools earlier in the week as part of its Education Programme.”