Asher Armstrong

Pianist Asher Armstrong has been noted for his “total honesty with regard to the composer and the connection to the audience … imaginative, sensitive, powerful, wide palette of sounds … deep and sophisticated tone quality,” “deeply expressive and sensitive spirit,” “astounding technique and originality,” “marvelous, huge sound” and for an unusually intuitive communicative power: “listening to Asher perform gives one the impression he is a ‘piano natural’, born to play the piano.”
Asher made his solo recital debut at 15, performing Chopin’s B-flat minor Sonata and works of Liszt, and subsequently with the Maryville Symphony Orchestra (Grieg Piano Concerto). Asher has worked with many leading pianists of North America and Europe, including Michael Chertock (M.M CCM), Kevin Kenner, Nicholas Ashton, Fay Adams (BM TN), and renowned Romanian pianist Marietta Orlov (DMA UofT).

Asher maintains an active concert career: notable recent engagements include solo recital performances at the Penderecki Academy in Krakow, the Royal College of Music in London (UK), the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto), and as a concerto soloist with the Washington-Idaho Symphony Orchestra (as well soloist in the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor concerto with the North York Concerto Orchestra, and in the Choral Fantasy with the Mozart Players of Toronto).

A passionate, committed teacher, Asher is on the Piano Faculty of the University of Toronto where he is a Lecturer of Piano and Chamber Music. Asher also serves on the Piano Faculty at York University in north Toronto. Prior to these appointments, Asher served as an Assistant professor of Piano at the University of Arkansas, and he has taught at several other institutions, including the Interlochen School for the Arts.

Asher serves as an adjudicator and masterclass clinician at many festivals and competitions throughout North America, and internationally, and is also a proud member of the Royal Conservatory’s College of Examiners, as a Senior Examiner. As a performer and scholar, Asher’s principal focus is to advocate for women’s music, and his work has been published by Cambridge University Press’s Tempo, as well as Clavier/Piano Magazine, American Music Teacher, the European Piano Teachers Association Piano Journal, Canadian Music Teacher, MTNA’s E-Journal, the Kaprálová Society Journal, and others.