Biography
A staunch proponent of the Russian Cantabile musical tradition, cellist and composer Illarion Gershkovich, a San Francisco native, currently studies at the Oberlin College and Conservatory.
Recently, he returned from a year abroad in the UK, where he studied composition at the Royal College of Music (supported by the Humphrey Searle scholarship). At present, Illarion continues toward his cello and organic chemistry degrees at the Oberlin (supported by the John F. Oberlin and Conservatory Dean's scholarships).
Cellist
Illarion began studying the cello at eight years old with Sergei Riabtchenko, and has since received tutelage from Moscow Conservatory Professor Igor Gavrysh, Oberlin Conservatory Professor Dmitry Kouzov, and Royal College of Music Professor Alexander Boyarsky. In 2018, he won second place in the American Protégé Music Competition, performing at Carnegie Hall, and has since appeared as a soloist with the Golden Gate Symphony Orchestra and the San Domenico Virtuoso Program Orchestra da Camera. Illarion also has a strong background in chamber music, intensively studying Dmitri Shostakovich’s string quartets with students of the original performers while still in high school.
In his second undergraduate year, Illarion organized a concert of Russian Salon Music at the Oberlin Conservatory in collaboration with the Russian Department. For the concert, he not only curated a historically informed concert program based on musical salons of late 19th century Russia, but also extended the practice into the modern day, incorporating works by later Russian composers which could have been involved had the tradition continued.
Composer
As a composer, Illarion premiered his first orchestral piece, Rain (2017), at age twelve with the Golden Gate Symphony. In 2019, his Double Cello Concerto was premiered in Washington D.C. in collaboration with Dr. Tanya Anisimova, with whom Illarion later began formal composition training. Starting in high school, his works for string orchestra, including Fantaisie in G-sharp minor (2022) and Désolé (2023), have been performed by the Virtuoso Program Orchestra da Camera.
The scherzo movement of his first Piano Quartet (2024) was premiered by the faculty ensemble at the Chee-Yun and Friends Music Festival , where Illarion’s string arrangements of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations, and Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No.2 were also performed by the festival orchestra.While studying with Kenneth Hesketh at the Royal College of Music, Illarion premiered his first ballet, The Undertaker (2026), at the Great Exhibitionists concert series. This work, based on Alexander Pushkin’s eponymous short story, builds on the composer's experience as a ballet dancer in his youth and engages with narrative balletic traditions, while reinterpreting the form for the modern day. Illarion's Sonata for Cello and Guitar (2026) also recieved it's premiere at the Royal College of Music, as part of the Contemporary Music in Action module.
Conductor
Illarion debuted as a conductor at age twelve with the Golden Gate Symphony, conducting a movement of Dvorak's "New World" Symphony. Since then, he has also appeared with the junior and senior orchestras of the Chee-Yun and Friends Music Festival, as well as the Royal College of Music Ballet Orchestra.
