Dubbed a ‘visionary’ by the San Diego Troubadour, Gloria Yehilevsky is a London-based composer, percussionist, and researcher championing transdisciplinary and collaborative music. She is currently an MPhil/PhD candidate in Creative Practice, Music in the composition department at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Her compositional approach is centred on music written for small improvising ensembles which she performs in.
As a performer, she won the PAS Armand Zildjian award, is a Musical Merit Foundation finalist and protégé, won the Italy PAS Vibraphone competition and placed 2nd in the Indiana PAS Day of Percussion Marimba Competition. She has performed with the San Diego Symphony, World Percussion Group, and members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Third Coast Percussion and Ensemble Contrechamps, among others. Notable appearances include The Rady Shell (USA), Flatpack Festival (UK), MASS MoCA (USA), Percussive Arts Society International Convention (USA), Cartes Blanches soirée at L’iceBergues (CH), Birmingham’s Symphony Hall and CBSO Centre (UK), Big Ears Festival (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), and Festival Ibérico de Música de Badajoz (ES).
She commissioned and premiered works by composers including Samn Johnson, Michael Laurello, Olivia Murphy, Alyssa Weinberg, Hugo Bell, Alicia Jane Turner, Jonathan Scales, Stephanie Orlando, Guusje Ingen Housz, Matthijs van Dijk, Alex Howley and Chalcedony Williams, among others. Her guest artist appearances have included California Institute of the Arts (USA), Royal Northern College of Music (UK), West University of Timișoara (ROM), Norwegian Academy of Music (NO), University of Nebraska – Omaha (USA), University of North Alabama (USA), Eastern Tennessee State University (USA), Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (UK), and others. Many of these involved presentations of her research on ‘Guided Improvisation,’ an initiative to encourage classically-trained musicians to improvise utilising bridging compositions, work which was published in Percussive Notes. Further, she has served as Associate Editor of the journal since 2020 and continues to write for it and other publications.
She co-founded the Sounding Eye collective and co-directed and performed in Dreamerfly, and other stories, an evening-length online and live performance combining animation and original jazz music. It was described as “ethereal” in a 4-star review by the Guardian. Dreamerfly was commissioned by the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, received Arts Council England funding, benefitted from an overfunded Kickstarter campaign, and was supported by Mid Atlantic Arts through USArtists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Composition highlights include her 2018-19 percussion and double bass duo Minister of Loneliness, a multi-disciplinary collaboration with Chinese animator Shiyi Li, which was invited to the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music’s International Symposium in Bangkok, Thailand. It was also performed and exhibited in the UK, France, Hong Kong, and the US, with radio play by WSMR’s Modern Notebook. Her marimba/vibraphone duo Borrowed Reality enjoyed dual premieres in 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art – San Diego and the University of California – San Diego.
She recently returned to music after two years outside the industry, when she completed an MSc in Psychology at the University of Greenwich, where she conducted research with UK- and France-based meditation retreat centres spanning contemplative neuroscience, cognitive control, and alterations of consciousness. This work, synthesised with profound personal experiences, influences her compositional practice. She is interested in complexity and cognition, intergenerational and embodied trauma, and music’s primacy in society.
