I encountered Jerome on a tour with the Super World Orchestra in 2000. He was an amazing horn player – I’ll remember his solos from Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story for a long time.
From Peter Dobrin, classical music critic, Philadelphia Inquirer:
Jerome Ashby, 1956-2007
Jerome Ashby, associate principal hornist of the New York Philharmonic and a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music, died Dec. 26, Curtis reports. Ashby was one of the few African-American members of a major American orchestra – not only in 1979 when he joined the Philharmonic as associate principal hornist, but also today. He was a native of Charleston, S.C., and attended the Performing Arts High School and the Juilliard School. As I’ve written before, it’s hard to measure the power telegraphed by the presence of an African-American musician in such a prominent spot. But every anecdotal hint suggests it sends a very strong signal about what’s possible in life. We’ll never know what the sight and sound of Ashby at the Philharmonic, Curtis and Aspen would have meant to budding classical musicians in the two, three or four decades by which his life was cut short.
