18-year-old percussionist Jordan Ashman wins 2022 BBC Young Musician

BBC Young Musicians finalists - Ethan Loch, Jaren Ziegler, Sofía Patterson-Gutiérrez, Jordan Ashman, Sasha Canter at Bridgewater Hall (Photo Dan Prince/BBC)

The winner of this year's BBC Young Musician was announced last night as being 18-year-old percussionist Jordan Ashman from Cambridgeshire. Ashman's winning performance was of American composer Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto, accompanied by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Mark Wigglesworth. Higdon's concerto was written in 2005 for percussionist Colin Currie and scored for a mix of pitched and non-pitched instruments [read more about Currie's thoughts on the concerto in my 2021 interview]. 

Jordan Ashman & BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
(Photo Dan Prince/BBC)

The BBC Young Musician 2022 final was filmed on Thursday 29 September at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, and it also featured performances by the other four 2022 BBC Young Musician Category Winners: 

• 19-year-old trumpeter Sasha Canter, a Royal Academy of Music student from Oxfordshire
• 18-year-old pianist Ethan Loch from Glasgow, currently studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
• 17-year-old flautist Sofía Patterson-Gutiérrez from Stockport, in her final year at Chetham’s School of Music
• viola player Jaren Ziegler, also 17, from London, a Junior Royal Academy of Music student and A Level student at University College School

Jordan began playing the drum kit when he was 7 and soon expanded into percussion. He is currently studying at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He has played with the National Children’s Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra and the National Youth Brass Band. On Jordan’s performance at the Grand Final, Anna Lapwood (a member of the jury) said: "Jordan Ashman’s performance started not with loud, flashy playing, but with exquisite, gentle beauty. He held the entire room throughout that delicate opening and kept that magic through his whole performance"

The TV broadcast of the finale is available on BBC iPlayer.