Biography
British pianist Ashley Fripp has performed extensively as recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist throughout Europe, Asia, North America, Africa and Australia in many of the world's most prestigious concert halls. Highlights include the Carnegie Hall (New York), Musikverein (Vienna), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), the Philharmonie halls of Cologne, Paris, Luxembourg and Warsaw, the Bozar (Brussels), the Royal Festival, Barbican and Wigmore Halls (London), the Laeiszhalle (Hamburg), Palace of Arts (Budapest), the Megaron (Athens), Konzerthaus Dortmund, the Gulbenkian Auditorium (Lisbon) and the Konserthus (Stockholm).
He has won prizes at more than a dozen national and international competitions, including at the Hamamatsu (Japan), Birmingham and Leeds International Piano Competitions, the Royal Over-Seas League Competition, the Concours Européen de Piano (France) and the coveted Gold Medal from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. In 2013, Ashley won the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ highest award, The Prince's Prize, and was chosen as a 'Rising Star' by the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO). He has also performed in the Chipping Campden, Edinburgh, Brighton, Bath, Buxton, City of London and St. Magnus International Festivals as well as the Oxford International Piano Festival, the Festival Pontino di Musica (Italy) and the Powsin International Piano Festival (Poland). A frequent guest on broadcasting networks, Ashley has appeared on BBC television and radio, Euroclassical, Eurovision TV and the national radio stations of Hungary, Spain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Portugal. He has collaborated with orchestras including the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, the Milton Keynes City Orchestra and the Kammerorchester der Universität Regensburg (with whom, in 2012, he recorded Chopin Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2). He has worked with conductors including Semyon Bychkov, James Judd, Vasily Petrenko, Robertas Šervenikas, Hilary Davan Wetton, Jonathan Bloxham, Graham Buckland and Peter Stark.
Ashley Fripp studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with Ronan O'Hora and with Eliso Virsaladze at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole (Italy). He recently completed his doctoral studies into the piano music of Thomas Adès. Ashley has been a member of Talent Unlimited since 2016.
Thomas Adès, composer, pianist and conductor
“Ashley Fripp is a genuine virtuoso, an astoundingly brilliant and masterly pianist, and his total grasp of the music is a joy to hear”
New York Times
“Disarmingly precocious”
Birmingham Post
“Ashley Fripp is a pianist of formidable intelligence. Add to that a fearless, loose-limbed technique and a prodigious memory...and you have a young talent which needs to be taken very seriously indeed”
Musical Opinion
“...This was an amazing reading, gripping, sensuous and full of colour and flavour. Listen out for Fripp in the future; I certainly will”
Rheinische Post
“Sometimes breathtakingly fast, sometimes as slowly as a narrator telling his story in the moment, sometimes folksy and temperamental, sometimes lyrical, yet always with picturesque phrasing, he brought the little pieces to life with exquisite class.”
Mittelbayerische Zeitung
“A master of restraint... he allowed Chopin's arabesques to effervesce weightlessly”
