Still in her early twenties, cellist Ashley Bathgate has already stirred critics and audiences with the “poignance,” “passion,” and “supreme musicianship” of her performances. As a recitalist, she has appeared at the Saratoga Music Festival, Barge Music, and at the Pleshakov Music Center, to name a few, and this season makes her official New York Debut in Carnegie’s Weill Hall. She has also been invited frequently as a concerto soloist, including appearances with the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra and in performances of the d’Albert and Barber cello concertos with Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra.

Devoted to chamber music, Ashley has performed in the US, Canada, and Europe, and has been featured by the prestigious Saratoga Chamber Music Festival, where she performed with Chantal Juillet and Pascal Roge. In addition, she has relished the opportunity to perform new and recent works, most notably with renowned composers John Adams, Ezra Laderman and Martin Bresnick. Ashley is a member of the Yale Cellos, directed by Aldo Parisot, the Yale Philharmonia and is a frequent guest artist at the Windham Chamber Music Festival.

Ashley was a full scholarship student at Bard College. Having received her Masters degree from the Yale University School of Music in 2007, she is completing her studies at Yale. She was selected last season for the distinguished Artist Diploma program by Aldo Parisot, and in that year received the prize in his name for the gifted cellist most showing promise for a concert career. Her previous teachers include Rudolph Doblin, Ann Alton and Luis Garcia-Renart, and she has participated in master-classes with Jian Wang, Ralph Kirshbaum, Irene Sharp and Jesus Castro-Balbi. Among her many awards are a grant from the New York Philharmonic Players Fund sponsored by Stephen and Elaine Stamas, and top prizes in the Lois Lyman Concerto Competition (1999 and 2001), and the Hugo Kauder Cello Competition in 2006.