Cambridge musician Jordan Ashman wins BBC Young Musician 2022 percussion final
Update: Jordan Ashman wins grand final
Seventeen-year-old Jordan Ashman, from Milton, Cambridgeshire, has won the percussion final of BBC Young Musician 2022 and will progress through to the grand final of the competition.
The 2022 Hills Road leaver is the fourth finalist to be announced as part of the 2022 edition of the contest, joining viola player Jaren Ziegler, flautist Sofía Patterson-Gutiérrez, and trumpeter Sasha Canter.
The BBC Young Musician 2022 percussion final was recorded in early July at Saffron Hall in Saffron Walden, Essex. Highlights were broadcast on BBC Four this evening (Wednesday, October 5) on BBC4 at 7pm. The other percussion finalists were George Garnett (18), Joshua Gearing (17), Sophie Warner (18) and Eric Zhang (15).
The expert panel of judges for the percussion final included Paul Philbert – principal timpanist of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chineke! Orchestra – and international soloist Beibei Wang. They joined organist, director of music at Pembroke College, and broadcaster Anna Lapwood, chair of all the BBC Young Musician 2022 category final judging panels.
Jordan is quoted on the Hills Road website as saying: “I started to play percussion when I was seven years old because I didn’t enjoy piano and wanted to learn something new. Since then, my interest has expanded into classical, jazz and many more genres. The versatility of percussion is one of the many reasons that I love playing it.”
Hour-long programmes of highlights from each category final will be broadcast on BBC Four tomorrow (Thursday, October 6). They are introduced by saxophonist and broadcaster Jess Gillam – a competition finalist herself in 2016 and BBC Radio 3 presenter – and classical soul pianist, composer, and producer Alexis Ffrench.
[Read more: Classical pianist Alexis Ffrench to address Wolfson College, Cambridge]
There is also complementary coverage on BBC Radio 3, with highlights from the category finals, presented by Linton Stephens with contributions from Jess Gillam, broadcast in the lunchtime concert slot on Friday (October 7).
View the BBC Young Musician website at bbc.co.uk/youngmusician.