Isabella Gellis is a British-Canadian composer of acoustic music. With tactility, play, and manipulation of perception at its core, her work often focuses on imagined and disguised sounds, steeped in the silly, absurd, and surreal.
Recent highlights include: the premiere of her opera The Devil’s Den’ (Shadwell Opera commission), with libretto also by the composer, at the 2024 Nevill Holt Festival; ‘Valedictions’, with the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento at Transart Festival (conducted by Finnegan Downie Dear); ‘Four Morris Interludes’ (AMFS commission) at the Aspen Music Festival; ‘Two Haikus’ – toured around Japan by countertenor Feargal Mostyn-Williams; and a piece for solo cello premiered by Adrian Brendel at Wigmore Hall (Royal Society of Musicians commission).
Upcoming works include a piece for the LSO to be conducted by Antonio Pappano in Trafalgar Square this June, a piece for 12 Ensemble to be premiered at Wigmore Hall in July, a song for James Gilchrist and Jocelyn Freeman (SongEasel) in May, and a solo guitar piece for the London Guitar Festival in October.
The 25/26 season will also see the premiere of a new orchestral work commissioned by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, conducted by Rafael Payare.
She has been awarded the Jacob Druckman Prize (Aspen Music Festival), Bicentenary Prize (Royal Academy of Music), Postgraduate Composition Prize (RAM), Priaulx Rainier Prize (Musicians’ Company), and has received support from the Vaughan Williams Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation, and scholarships from Aspen Music Festival and School (Susan and Ford Schumann Scholarship) and the Royal Academy of Music.
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Isabella co-directs Concerts at St Jude’s, a chamber music series in South West London