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: a piece for the LSO conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano in Trafalgar Square, a piece for 12 Ensemble premiered at Wigmore Hall, 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; a piece for solo cello premiered by Adrian Brendel at Wigmore Hall (Royal Society of Musicians commission).
The 25/26 season will 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)
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Isabella co-directs Concerts at St Jude’s, a chamber music series in South West London