Ashton’s Story
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Ashton Gleckman was born in August 2000 to Jennifer Gleckman, a health and wellness executive, and Dr. Ari Gleckman, a clinical psychologist. Ashton would become the middle child and only son, a brother to elder sister Ariana and younger sister Summer. The family resided in Indianapolis.
Ashton had an unconventional introduction to music, and was exposed to many forms of media as a young boy. As a result, Ashton had attended several rock concerts and seen serious films such as Schindler’s List by the time he was six.
On a whim, the Gleckmans bought their son an inexpensive guitar. Ashton was six and a half years old when he received his first guitar on Christmas Day 2007.
Six months later, Ashton announced he had written a song.
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He soon enrolled in guitar and drum lessons and would later take piano lessons. His instructors found that his affinity and natural talent for music surpassed the expectations of students his age. An innate sense of pitch plus an aptitude for music theory helped him excel.
Through school and the local music community, Ashton began to meet other kids who also had ambitions of writing and performing their own music. At age 10, Ashton released an EP of original music with an 11 year old lyricist.
In 2011, Ashton founded a youth rock band called The Rising Gravity Experience. The band wrote original music and put their own spin on classic and contemporary rock covers. RGE enjoyed local success and performed at the Indianapolis 500 Festival Mini Marathon, Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital and other prestigious events. RGE was interviewed by The Indianapolis Star and WZPL 99.5 FM, and busked on Nashville’s legendary Broadway Avenue. Their debut album was recorded at Nashville’s Dark Horse Studios. The EP, Disillusioned, was released in April 2014. RGE ended its run in December 2014.
The CD version of Hidden.
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In 2015, Ashton began writing and later filmed an original screenplay, Obscurity. In the same year, he plunged deeply into the world of music composition for film and television, teaching himself the complex software used by professionals. Months of intense work and skills acquisition paid off when he was tapped by producer Gi Orman to score the Project Witness-sponsored Holocaust documentary “Once Upon a Family: The Saga of Polish Jewry.”
The following year, Ashton exploded onto the YouTube and Soundcloud scene with original compositions. His work was featured on streaming music channels. Music he composed for short films began to win awards. His short film, Obscurity, had its theatrical premiere at Halloween that year, drawing several hundred attendees.
Life only accelerated in 2017. Ashton began the year by shooting his new short film, Eldritch, at the abandoned Central State Hospital in Indianapolis. He attended several scoring workshops at NYU, then flew directly to Los Angeles, where he began an internship with Academy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions. He would finish the year with the Indianapolis premiere of Hidden, the second Holocaust documentary he scored for director Gi Orman.
Ashton didn’t slow down in 2018. The first part of the year was occupied by his newest short film, The Soldier, a tribute to American troops. The film was released on Memorial Day. Not long after, it was off to Baden, Austria for the Hollywood Music Workshop, a venue for composers of all types to meet and study under award-winning and internationally recognized masters in their craft.
Throughout this time, Ashton continued to compose original music and putting out his Behind the Score series. It was through this series that Hans Zimmer discovered Ashton’s work. Lines of communication opened, and Ashton has since provided music to both of Zimmer’s companies, Remote Control Productions and Bleeding Fingers Music, the leading television and movie scoring company.
In November 2018, Ashton released his debut solo album, Fragments. Fragments was followed by his sophmore album, Discovery, his third album, Winds of Spring, and his fourth album, Memories, in 2020. Ashton also released two albums of his film score arrangements titled A Night at the Movies (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2).
In 2019, Ashton began his career as a documentary filmmaker with the film, We Shall Not Die Now, released in December 2019. The film premiered at the Heartland International Film Festival. His second film as director, editor, and co-composer, The Hills I Call Home, was released in March 2021 through Gravitas Ventures. Later that year, Ashton began research for what would become an 8-part documentary series chronicling the life of President John F. Kennedy. The series, titled Kennedy, is written and directed by Ashton and produced in partnership with Academy Award-winning producer Jon Kamen, known for producing films like The Fog of War, Hamilton on Disney+, and Summer of Soul. The series is slated for release in the fall of 2023.
