Ashley Solomon

Ashley Solomon has shaped the early music landscape across Britain and internationally through his work as a solo performer on flute and recorder, his leadership of the period-instrument ensemble Florilegium, and his teaching, with a particular focus on promoting the compositions of Georg Philipp Telemann.

Born in 1968 in Sussex, England, he received a scholarship to study recorder and flute at the Royal College of Music in London, where he completed his degree with first-class honors before securing a Countess of Munster Musical Trust award to support further training. After lessons with Peter Holtslag on recorder and Lisa Beznosiuk on flute, he finished his studies in 1991 and immediately claimed first prize at the Moeck International Recorder Competition. This success led to an initial solo appearance at Wigmore Hall in London and provided the foundation for founding Florilegium alongside harpsichordist Neal Peres da Costa; Solomon soon assumed the role of the ensemble’s director and joined the faculty of his alma mater as a professor in 1994.

His first recordings appeared with Florilegium in 1993, followed by a solo release the next year featuring Italian Baroque repertoire for flute and recorder on the Meridian label; he later transferred his solo and ensemble projects to the Dutch label Channel Classics. Among his solo discs are the complete Bach flute sonatas issued in two volumes and a program of pieces for period harp and flute by Mozart, Rossini, Gluck, Naderman, Bochsa, and Tulou, while Florilegium’s programming has also moved into the Romantic era. He has performed with Florilegium on tour and joined the Australian Chamber Orchestra during its initial phase of international prominence in the late 1990s, appearing as soloist across Europe, the Americas, the Far East, and Australia. In 2006 he became Head of Historical Performance at the Royal College of Music, receiving a personal chair there in 2014. With Florilegium he has visited Bolivia on three occasions, offering instruction to local young players, and in 2017 he issued a recording of Telemann’s twelve Fantasias for unaccompanied flute performed on three contrasting historic instruments made of wood, porcelain, and ivory.