Adjunct Faculty
Areas of Expertise: Flute, Russian music
A passionate educator, performer, and musicologist, flutist Ashley Shank has appeared as a recitalist, chamber musician, clinician and adjudicator throughout the United States.
Shank joined the faculty of Lycoming College as adjunct instructor of flute in the fall of 2014. She has also been a member of the flute faculty for the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Community Music School, Illinois Summer Youth Music, Illinois Chamber Music Symposium, University of Akron Junior High Summer Band Camp and the Firestone High School Performing Arts Magnet. She has maintained a private flute studio since 1999 and her students have earned top chairs in district and regional band festivals, received superior ratings at solo and ensemble festivals, and continued their flute studies at the college level.
Committed to education at all levels, she has significant experience in public school education, including teaching elementary general music and arts infusion in the Urbana School District in Urbana, Illinois and choral music at Brashear High School in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Shank has performed in a variety of solo, chamber, and large ensemble settings. Solo appearances include:
- Nielsen concerto with the University of Akron Symphony Orchestra as the graduate-level winner of the 2009 University of Akron Concerto Competition,
- Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with the Chamber Orchestra of the Alleghenies and at the University of Illinois
- Piccolo soloist with the University of Illinois Concert Band
She has performed and presented at the Kentucky Flute Fair, Mid-Atlantic Flute Convention, and National Flute Association Convention. This summer, Shank performed and recorded as co-principal flute for the International Fellowship of Conductors, Composers, and Collaborators (IFC3). A member of the Keystone Wind Ensemble, she has performed at the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles Convention and the International Trumpet Guild Convention and can be heard on eleven commercially released recordings.
This year, she has also joined the Wildcat Regiment Brass Band for a series of concerts featuring the music of the Port Royal Band, a Civil War regiment band that incorporated wind instruments. She has also performed with the Akron Symphony Orchestra, Concert Band of Central Illinois, Kankakee Symphony, Opera per Tutti and the Williamsport Symphony.
Her performances have been broadcast on WDWS radio in Champaign, Illlinois and WQED in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has been a prizewinner of the Tuesday Music Club Scholarship Competition, University of Akron Concerto Competition, and Johnstown Symphony Concerto Competition and was a finalist for the prestigious Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship.
She is a founding member and Grants & Finances Chair of the Flute New Music Consortium, an organization with the shared mission of commissioning and supporting new music for the flute.
Former teachers include Jonathan Keeble, George Pope, Alberto Almarza, Therese Wacker, Brian Luce, Carl Adams, and Jennifer Dell.
Publications
“Composers as Storytellers: The Inextricable Link Between Literature and Music in 19th Century Russia” can be viewed on OHIOLINK. An expanded online version of the thesis will be available in the fall of 2016.
Online Encyclopedia of Flute Music from Russia and the Former Soviet Republics, which will include expanded annotated entries, links to sound recordings, and other resources by Shank.
“A Handbook of Solo and Chamber Literature for Flute by Composers from Russia and the Former Soviet Republics” which identifies almost 3,000 pieces, most virtually unknown outside of Russia and the former Soviet Republics. For this doctoral thesis, Shank was named winner of the National Flute Association’s 2015 Graduate Research Competition.