02/16/2025
Here is my official retirement announcement that will be appearing (all or part) in the near future on the UM School Music website:
Trombone Professor Tom Ashworth has announced he will be retiring following a thirty-three-year career at the University of Minnesota. Ashworth also served on the faculty at the Canberra (Australia) School of Music and the University of Kansas and is a former member of the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra. He wants to thank Linda, his wife of forty-six years, for her continual support and endless patience and their children Carolyn, Lawrence, Emily and Michael for following him around the world and attending countless concerts and summer festivals.
Ashworth began his teaching career as a freshman at Fresno State when local trombone great Robert Bergstrom entrusted him with his fifteen weekly middle school and high school students. Following five years of undergraduate studies, freelance gigs and private teaching in Fresno, Ashworth served as a Teaching Assistant at North Texas State for three years, working with up to fifteen weekly students. That was followed by five years as a freelance musician in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, enjoying a varied schedule of recording sessions, musical theater, industrial shows, dance bands, brass quintets and orchestral work. He then spent three years at the University of Kansas, before joining the faculty at the University of Minnesota. During his university teaching career, Ashworth has as enjoyed working on a wide range of repertoire with hundreds of talented and dedicated students on alto, tenor and bass trombone and euphonium.
Many of his former students are now public school teachers preparing future generations of performers and educators. Former students have also been, or are presently on the faculties of North Texas State, Nebraska, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, Millikin, Harvard, Baylor, Kansas State, Wisconsin-Whitewater, Old Dominion, Eastern Michigan, McNally-Smith, Texas-Rio Grande Valley, Miami of Ohio, Kent State, Saint Cloud State, Concordia-Moorhead, Maryland-Baltimore County, University of Northwestern-Saint Paul and Bethel University. Many have enjoyed performing with orchestras throughout the US and in Mexico, Australia and Europe. Others are full-time or freelance performers in major metropolitan areas throughout the nation. Numerous former students have been or are presently members of the Australian Army Band-Duntroon and the Washington DC-based US Army Band-Pershing’s Own, US Army Blues, US Army Ceremonial Brass, US Navy Band, US Air Force Band and the US Air Force Airmen of Note. Others has been members of US military ensembles in California, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Minnesota. While most of his former students have pursued careers is music, others have found success in law, aviation and business-and Ashworth is equally proud of them all!
Ashworth performed on hundreds of Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concerts on alto, tenor and bass trombone and euphonium and has joined the SPCO on tours throughout the US and in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. He appears on SPCO recordings with conductors Hugh Wolff, Christopher Hogwood, Andreas Delfs and Douglas Boyd. Ashworth has also performed with the Minnesota Orchestra with conductors Eiji Oue, Osmo Vanska and Doc Serverinsen. While in Australia, Ashworth performed with the symphony orchestras of Sydney, Tasmania and Canberra and joined the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for a European Tour with maestro Edo De Waart. He joined conductor William Mclaughlin and principal players from the Minnesota Orchestra and the SPCO for MPR recordings of Stravinsky’s Octet and L’Histoire du Soldat. His most memorable orchestral performances include symphonies by Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert and Mahler, Mozart’s Requiem and Great Mass in C minor, Martin’s Concerto for Seven Winds and Orchestra, Milhaud’s La creation du monde, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, Octet and L’Histoire du Soldat, Haydn’s Creation and The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, Adam’s Chamber Symphony, Holst’s Planets, Aho’s Insect Symphony and Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder and Pelleas and Melisande.
Ashworth is especially proud of working with the SPCO and Swedish trombone virtuoso Christian Lindberg on arranging the commission and debut performances of Toru Takemitu’s Fantasma/Cantos II.
Ashworth’s brass chamber music experience includes numerous freelance ensembles and the KU and UM faculty quintets. He has recorded CDs the with Graham Ashton Brass Quintet, and a brass sextet featured on UM Trumpet Professor’s Marissa Benedict’s CD Continental Shift. He has toured the US on trombone and euphonium with the Summit Brass and recorded several CDs with Symphonia, a professional tuba-euphonium ensemble.
As the founder and conductor of the UM Trombone Choir, Ashworth has led the ensemble in outreach concerts throughout the Twin Cities area, at state and regional trombone workshops and at the International Trombone Festival and the American Trombone Workshop. Ashworth is especially proud of the ensemble’s collaboration with the late Henry Charles Smith on numerous performances and recording projects.
Ashworth has appeared as soloist with university, high school and community wind bands and jazz ensembles. Some of his most memorable solo concerts include his three solo performances with the United States Army Band-Pershing’s Own at the American Trombone Workshop in Washington DC and performing the world premiere of Dana Wilson’s Trombone Concerto with maestro Craig Kirchhoff and the UM Wind Ensemble.
Ashworth has participated in the Grand Tetons Music Festival and the Brevard, Ojai, Keystone Brass, Raphael Mendez and Wintergreen music festivals. He has appeared as a trombone and euphonium soloist and at music conferences throughout the US including the Midwest Clinic and music education conferences in Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Texas, Arizona and California. He has presented clinics and performed on multiple international brass conferences. He hosted international trombone and tuba-euphonium conferences at the U of M and also organized numerous regional chamber brass workshops and appearances by dozens of guest artists from the US, Europe and Asia,
From elementary school through college, Ashworth’s teachers and mentors stressed the importance of musical versatility. As a result, he has extensive experience in jazz and commercial music. Ashworth played second and lead trombone in the North Texas State One O’Clock Jazz Lab Band from 1981-1983. The One O’Clock toured Europe in 1982, performing at the Montreux, North Sea, Pori and Antibes jazz festivals. In addition to recording a live CD with the One O’Clock at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1982, Ashworth appears on Lab ’82 as second trombone and as lead and solo trombone on Lab ’83.
During and following his graduate studies at North Texas State, Ashworth performed and recorded with the Lou Fischer Big Band and also performed with Them Bones. Both of these feature top Dallas-area studio musicians, with many being former members of the Stan Kenton, Woody Herman and Buddy Rich big bands. Following his MM studies at NTSU, Ashworth founded Mom’s Jazz Band, a big band comprised of Dallas studio musicians as well as NTSU faculty members, students and alumni. The band was later re-formed in Lawrence, Kansas during Ashworth’s years on the KU faculty. Ashworth was a Jazz Lab Band TA at NTSU and has taught jazz improvisation at KU and the U of M.
Ashworth has been active in musical theater orchestras in California, Texas and Minnesota. He played lead trombone for many years in national touring productions at the Ordway Theater in Saint Paul. His favorite shows include West Side Story, Chicago, Damn Yankees, Spamalot, 52nd Street and A Chorus Line.
Ashworth’s influential teachers throughout his student years included (in chronological order) Donald Wilkinson, Charles Schroeder, Lawrence Huck, Lawrence Sutherland, Wilbur Sudmeier, Leon Brown, Vern Kagarice and John Kitzman. He continued his musical education during his teaching career through lessons with Michael Mulcahy, Joseph Alessi, Ralph Sauer, Gene Pokorny and Michael Davis. Ashworth was honored to be invited to participate in week-long soloist masterclasses with Christian Lindberg in Germany and Finland.
Having spent far too much time away from family during his career, Ashworth now looks forward to working with Linda to spoil their nine grandchildren while enjoying their new bucolic lifestyle in the rolling hills of western Wisconsin. They plan on regular RV trips through the US and Canada, overseas travel, a cruise or two-and lots of naps.
