Amelia Freedman, who has died aged 84, not only commissioned hundreds of new works from leading composers, but also founded a stellar ensemble to give the works superlative performances. While studying clarinet at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) she was involved in an initiative to form an ensemble. On being told by the other players that she was the only person who could efficiently organise such a venture, she relinquished her playing role to take over the administration of the ensemble.
Her resilience was tested from the start by resistance from the RAM principal, Sir Thomas Armstrong (who much later, by her account, tried to take credit for offering support). Prevented from using the academy’s name in the title, she alighted (at the suggestion of the promoter John Woolf) on the Nash Ensemble, after the architect John Nash, designer of the imposing terraces adjacent to the conservatoire.
