Cellist Ashlee Booth and violist Cameron Rehberg will premiere “Fuego y Duende” on February 26th @ 4PM at Acoustic Corner in NC.

About the piece:

Fuego y duende is a composition about the unrelenting search that fuels music in all its forms. At its root, the need for music comes from an inexplicable desire to find something indescribable. Music is a constant search. In García Lorca’s words “…there are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned…”

About the performers:

Ashlee Booth (b.1993, West Palm Beach, FL) is a native Floridian and freelance cellist currently residing in Asheville, North Carolina where she teaches orchestra in the Buncombe County Schools.

Ashlee is a classically trained cellist who specializes in contemporary music. Ashlee has performed with the local contemporary music organization nief-norf in their Knoxville Concert Series and at the Big Ears Festival. During the summer of 2018, Ashlee appeared as a Performance Fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and in residency at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute with “Two-Way Street” and composer, Sarah Hennies.

Ashlee was the winner of the 2017 Concerto Competition at the University of Tennessee and performed the first movement of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto with the UTSO. She has appeared in masterclasses for artists such as Joel Krosnick, Desmond Hoebig, Collin Carr, Amit Paled, and the Dali String Quartet.

Her musical career extends beyond the stage. She is a registered teacher with the Suzuki Associations of America and received Book 1 training with Dr. Melissa Kraut. Ashlee is passionate about sharing her love of music and encouraging creativity in young students through her teaching. She is currently the Strings Teacher in the Buncombe County Schools and is the cello instructor at Bill Jones Music School, where she teaches private lessons and leads a biweekly improvisation group class. She has appeared as Guest Artist Faculty at the 2019 Tennessee Cello Workshop and at the Community Cello Works in Blacksb
urg, Virginia.

Ashlee strives to give her students a culturally responsible education. Her orchestra students are not only taught the fundamentals of musicality,
 but a wide range of musical styles, perspectives, and with an emphasis on relating music to the world around them.

Ashlee received her Bachelor’s degree from Florida State University where she studied with Greg Sauer. In 2018 Ashlee completed her MM and her work as the Graduate Teaching Assistant for Dr. Wesley Baldwin at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.