Yshani Perinpanayagam

Conductor

"Yshani Perinpanayagam breathes great energy and an infectious sense of swing"

Concertonet

"Perinpanayagam is a modern day musical polyglot"

Opera Now Magazine

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Yshani Perinpanayagam is a conductor, music director, pianist and composer known for the breadth of her artistry across genres and disciplines. She has performed at venues from Wigmore Hall to the London Palladium, at events from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival to the All Your Bass Festival, and with artists from the Philharmonia to Kate Nash. She has written works for London Sinfonietta, Onyx Brass, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Multi-Story Orchestra, St. Martin’s Voices, and for a play about Fanny Mendelssohn, and premiered various works herself including by Charlotte Bray, Joe Cutler, Gavin Higgins, Hannah Kendall, Claudia Molitor and Alex Paxton. She is a regular guest broadcaster on BBC Radio 3.

From podium to pit, Yshani’s bold, collaborative and imaginative leadership of diverse projects has garnered her international recognition. Such projects include Street Scene for Opéra de Paris; Philip Venables & Ted Huffman’s The F**gots and Their Friends Between Revolutions at Manchester International Festival, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Bregenzer Festspiele and Park Avenue Armory; triple-Oliver winner Emilia at the west end’s Vaudeville Theatre; Goat for Rambert Dance Company / Lost Dog Dance; Sondheim’s Passion starring Ruthie Henshall; Poppea for English Touring Opera; Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra at Mighty Hoopla Pop Festival; circus troupe Circa at Barbican Mime Festival; Les Noces for New Movement Collective; and with Olivier award winning show Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. She was Consultant MD and composer of additional music for Olivier-winning Wolf Witch Giant Fairy, a collaboration between devising folk artists Little Bulb Theatre and the Royal Opera House.

Yshani was a scholar at both the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She is one of the founding composers at Sound & Music’s Music Patron - an initiative seeking to revolutionise the way new music is funded. Yshani is represented by Rayfield Allied.

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Street Scene

Opera National de Paris

The orchestra moves brilliantly from jazzy accents to grand operatic flights without ever covering the voices, instead in beautiful harmony with them…. Through her clear and precise direction Yshani Perinpanayagam, a young British conductor with a successful international career, makes a significant Parisian debut here

Concert Classic

In the pit, the conductor Yshani Perinpanayagam breathes great energy and an infectious sense of swing

Concertonet

Ruination

Royal Ballet and Opera, London

it’s made transcendent by a very extra backing track: Musical director and onstage pianist Yshani Perinpanayagam swathes the show in a weird, genius musical patchwork where old hits by Radiohead and George Harrison become soaring vessels to transport you to another world

Time Out

Throughout the evening we are treated to some fabulous live music from Yshani Perinpanayagam on Piano, performing everything from Rachmaninoff to Steve Reich clapping music.... The music is all curated by Perinpanayagam, worthy of a soundtrack production

London Unattached

Powerful pianism from musical director Yshani Perinpanayagam and heart-stopping singing from counter-tenor Keith Pun and torch songstress Sheree DuBois, in music ranging from Purcell to Radiohead, effect many stirring shifts of register and mood.

The Arts Desk

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