Ashok Klouda

Winner of the 2006 J. & A. Beare Solo Bach Competition and the 2007 Royal College of Music Cello Competition, Ashok will be making his solo Wigmore Hall debut in the 2009/2010 season as a result of winning the Worshipful Company of Musicians/Concordia Foundation Young Artists Fund competition. Trained at the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music and the Hochschule der Künste Bern, his teachers have included Colin Carr, Josephine Knight, Jérôme Pernoo and Louise Hopkins. Ashok also performs on the Baroque cello, having studied it with Jennifer Ward Clarke and Catherine Rimer.

Ashok’s studies were made possible thanks to winning an Arts & Humanities Research Council ‘Professional Preparation Master’s Scheme Award’, awards from the Albert Cooper Music Charitable Trust, the Martin Musical Scholarship Fund, and the MBF Myra Hess trust. He was also awarded a full undergraduate scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music and a postgraduate scholarship at the Royal College of Music supported by a John Lewis Partnership Award.

A passionate chamber musician, Ashok has recently joined the highly acclaimed Barbirolli Quartet (www.tashmina.co.uk). The group, currently Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, will be embarking on a tour supported by the Royal Over-Seas League to Singapore, New Zealand and Australia later this year and next season will be performing in major concert halls throughout Europe as a result of being selected for the prestigious ECHO ‘Rising Stars’ scheme. Ashok’s previous quartet experience as a founding member of the Artea Quartet included a BBC Proms debut in 2004, recitals in the Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room and live performances on BBC Radio 3. The Artea Quartet also won the Philharmonia Orchestra/Martin Musical Scholarship Fund Total Ensemble Award, the Tillett Trust Young Artists’ Platform and were awarded the Royal Academy of Music’s Leverhulme Junior Fellowship 2004-2006.

Ashok’s early musical education was at the Junior Guildhall School of Music & Drama where he studied with Margaret Powell and won 1^st prize in the school’s only annual competition: the ‘Lutine Prize’. He made his debut as a soloist with orchestra at the age of thirteen and has since performed numerous concertos with orchestras around the country, most recently Brahms’ Double Concerto with violinist Rhys Watkins and the Brecknock Sinfonia.

In 2000 at the age of seventeen, Ashok was the only cellist from the U.K. to be selected to play in the Third World Cello Congress masterclasses held in Baltimore, where he played to David Geringas. He has gone on to participate in masterclasses with many other internationally acclaimed artists such as Anner Bylsma, Steven Doane, Bernard Greenhouse and Raphael Wallfisch, through organisations including I.M.S Prussia Cove and the London Cello Society.

Although more regularly appearing as a duo with pianist Joseph Middleton (www.josephmiddleton.com), Ashok also performs in a duo with classical accordionist Borut Zagoranski. The pair were recently invited back to the Royal Academy to work with the great Sofia Gubaidulina on some of her music and perform in a special concert to honour the composer’s visit. They have appeared in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival and have toured to Slovenia and Croatia – where they performed on television.

Ashok plays on a cello made in 2005 by Colin Irving.