Biography
A staunch proponent of the Russian cantabile musical tradition, composer and cellist Illarion Gershkovich, a San Francisco native, currently studies at the Oberlin College and Conservatory.
Recently, he returned from a year abroad in the United Kingdom, where he studied composition at the Royal College of Music, supported by the Humphrey Searle scholarship. At present, Illarion is completing his BA Cello Performance and BS Chemistry degrees at Oberlin, supported by the John F. Oberlin Scholarship and Conservatory Dean's Scholarships.
Composer
Illarion's compositional work primarily centers on large-scale programmatic forms and is charactarized by it's melodicism and a deep engagement with literature, history, and fine art. Driven by the conviction that beauty remains an essential and communicative force in contemporary composition, he prefers working in the ballet, orchestral, and film genres.
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. Based on Alexander Pushkin’s eponymous short story, this work draws upon Illarion's early experience studying ballet and engages with the traditions of narrative ballet, while reinterpreting the form for a contemporary audience. His 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.
At the age of twelve, Illarion premiered his first orchestral piece, Rain (2017), 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 he later began formal composition studies. Since 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 from his Piano Quartet No. 1 (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 Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No.2 were also performed by the festival orchestra.
Cellist
Specializing in the late-Romantic performance-practice tradition, Illarion began studying the cello at the age of eight with Sergei Riabtchenko. He has since received instruction from Moscow Conservatory Professor Igor Gavrysh, Oberlin Conservatory Professor Dmitry Kouzov, and Royal College of Music Professor Alexander Boyarsky. In 2018, he won second prize in the American Protégé Music Competition, leading to a performance 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, having studying Dmitri Shostakovich’s string quartets extensiveley 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. He curated a historically informed program inspired by the musical salons of late nineteenth-century Russia while extending the tradition into the present, incorporating works by later Russian composers that might plausibly have formed part of the salon repertoire had the tradition continued uninterrupted.
Conductor
Illarion made his conducting debut at age twelve with the Golden Gate Symphony, conducting a movement of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World." Since then, he has conducted the junior and senior orchestras of the Chee-Yun and Friends Music Festival, as well as the Royal College of Music Ballet Orchestra.
