Yale School of Music Photo
Ashley Smith
Clarinetist Ashley Smith, who is pursuing a master’s degree at the Yale School of Music, has earned the 2012 Freedman Fellowship for Classical Music, an annual prize administered by the Music Council of Australia.
“Last year,” a Yale School of Music news release indicates, Smith “was one of the winners of the School’s Chamber Music Competition.”
Smith, who is a native of Perth, Australia, was quoted in the Music Council of Australia’s announcement as saying, “My fellowship is for new music, new audiences and new composers. … I wish to contribute to contemporary music that is living and breathing.”
The Music Council of Australia’s website explains that “recipients of the MCA Freedman Fellowship receive $15,000 cash enabling them to carry out a proposal which forms part of their application.”
“Smith’s project,” according to the Yale School of Music’s news release, “is to workshop the performance of the clarinet works of Jorg Widmann, Magnus Lindberg, and Jukka Tiensuu alongside the composers and to present a recital tour in Finland, the United States, and Australia.”
The Music Council of Australia’s website indicates that the fellowship program, which names two winners each year — a jazz musician and a classical-music instrumentalist — is “a joint initiative of the Music Council of Australia and the Freedman Foundation.”