Ashley Addington

I’m excited to announce that I have joined the Flute Faculty at the Indian Hill Music School in Littleton, MA.  I will be available for lessons on Thursday afternoons and will be directing the flute choir on Thursday evenings.  The building is beautiful and it was great to meet so many lovely families and faculty members this past weekend at their Open House.  I’m excited to be a part of this school and look forward to a great year there!

The Indian Hill Flute Choir meets Thursday evenings from 7:30-9:00 PM and is open to intermediate and advanced students!  More information is available at www.indianhillmusic.org.

In my attempt to out-grow the college age furniture, I was making an effort to avoid collecting any additional Ikea furniture. This video might change my mind.

One highlight of my summer was participating in the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at New England Conservatory.  This was my third and favorite year of playing!  I met some great new friends and musicians and had the opportunity to perform pieces I had been wanting to play for some time now.  I had the privilege of working with Jennifer Bewerse (cello) and Kyle Blair (piano) on Kaija Saariaho’s Cendres for alto flute, cello, and piano.   The piece is beautiful to listen too and perhaps my favorite of her works that include flute.  Our group coalesced smoothly and had a great time working together during the week.  Another high point of the week was working on Afastim, by Chaya Czernowin, the composer at Harvard University.  It was enlightening to hear her speak about her musical thoughts and creative process when we performed the piece in a master class for her.

We had an impromptu photo shoot before our Flute and Cello Duo Recital this past June.  The Sanctuary of the Danvers United Methodist Church is filled with beautiful stain glass windows and we were lucky enough during our warm-up time to see some beautiful light coming through the windows after a torrential rainstorm that afternoon.  A few of the pictures in the gallery show us working with Charles Turner, the Music Director and Composer-in-Residence at the Church, on the premiere of his new piece for flute and cello entitled Eleven Love Songs.

All of the gallery photos are credited to the artistic and talented C.E. Courtney.

Rachel Arnold and I have been busy rehearsing for the upcoming flute and cello events. Jim Scully, the composer of Duplicitious Encounter, which we premiered in January, arranged a concert and recording session after he was  awarded a Subito Composers Grant.   We will record Duplicitious Encounter at the WGBH Fraser Recording Studios on Friday, August 6th.  The Saturday evening concert will feature music by Jim Scully, Nolan Stolz, Elliott Carter, Kaija Saariaho, Charles Turner and others!  It should be a fun evening – hope to see you there!

From Matthew Guerrieri’s Boston Globe review of the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice Iditarod on June 19th, 2010:

Many works privileged artful arrangements of envelope-pushing sounds over melodic or harmonic narrative. In Kaija Saariaho’s “Cendres,’’ flute, cello, and piano (Ashley Addington, Jennifer Bewerse, and Kyle Adam Blair) churned up an undulating sea of keening and growling swells.

Read full article.

Please join Rachel and I next Sunday for a great recital of new music!  We will be performing works by Elliott Carter, Kaija Saariaho, and others including world premieres of commissioned pieces by Charles Tuner and Jay Batzner.  The recital is at the Danvers United Methodist Church, 16 Sylvan Street, Danvers, Massachusetts.

Renowned Los Angeles-based pianist Danny Holt brings his unique brand of contemporary piano music to The Lily Pad. Music starts at 8pm and also features the contemporary flute and cello duo of Ashley Addington and Rachel Arnold.

“If his upcoming concert of classical music is met with a mosh pit, pianist Danny Holt wouldn’t mind at all.”
-Daily Hampshire Gazette

Danny Holt performs across the globe in concert halls, clubs, art galleries, churches, living rooms, and wherever else he can find a piano and someone to listen. Known for his no-holds-barred style, he has been called “the classical music equivalent of an extreme sports athlete” (The Record, Waterloo, Ontario) and Los Angeles City Beat named him one of the “local heroes” of L.A.’s music scene. He specializes in performing contemporary works, 20th century music, and obscure and neglected repertoire from past centuries, often juxtaposing diverse styles to create unexpected sonic flavors.

The Lily Pad program explores the influences of rock, jazz, and pop on contemporary classical music. Included in the program will be groovy British minimalism by Graham Fitkin, the eclectic music of Mike Garson (pianist for David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, etc.), Karen Tanaka’s Techno Etudes, and selected Radiohead transcriptions by Christopher O’Riley.

A specialist in contemporary music, Holt has held fellowships at the Bang On a Can Summer Music Institute, the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, and New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice, and he has worked with such composers as Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, Christian Wolff, James Tenney, Graham Fitkin, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Augusta Read Thomas, and Michael Finnissy, among others. He has received awards and grants from ASCAP, Yamaha, the American Composers Forum, the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, and others.

Holt’s Fast Jump CD (Innova, 2009) was a featured new release on both WNYC and iTunes, and includes world premiere recordings of works by David Lang (co-founder of Bang on a Can), Caleb Burhans, Lona Kozik, Graham Fitkin, and Jascha Narveson. Gramophone called the disc “a compelling showcase for Holt’s innate virtuosity and gregarious temperament” and Sequenza21.com called Holt’s playing “brilliant”.

On February 14, Holt launches his self-released follow-up CD, Release. Featuring minimalist/ambient works by contemporary and new age composers, this new album is a musical exploration of grief and remembrance: a tribute to Holt’s father who passed away in 2008.

My flute and I have been MIA the last month!  Last Saturday (October 3rd), in a wonderful and meaningful ceremony at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Gregory Cornelius and I got married.  The ceremony was full of music and we had an excellent string octet and flute perform works by Bach, Grieg, Mozart, Debussy, Villa-Lobos, and Beethoven.  Gregory and I would like to say thank you to all our family and friends that joined us on our wedding day and made it so special and memorable. I will upload a few pictures when we get them back.

This week, I have been getting re-acquainted with my flute!

A last minute decision led to a trip to New York City in the middle of August to attend the National Flute Association Convention.  I worked at the Flutacious booth in the convention hall.  The shop is based in the Los Angeles area and owned by the fabulous Cynthia Kelley.  Although I spent most of my time working in the exhibit hall, I did manage to sneak out to a few daytime events and heard the evening gala concerts.  This convention was hailed as big deal since it was in New York City.  The most newsworthy event occurred when Sir James Galway led a rousing crowd of 1,989 flutists to break the world record of flutists playing together at the same time.   I did not get a chance to participate since I was setting up in the exhibit hall, but they did make an announcement over the speaker.    It was quite a different situation when you left the Marriott in Times Square and walked out to the street and were surrounded by a few thousand tourists taking pictures, who probably had no idea that there were a few thousand flute players inside the Marriott.  Overall, a nice trip!  I have to give a congratulations shout-out to my friend, Sarah Paysnick, who earned 1st prize in the NFA Baroque Flute Artist Competition at the convention.