Nominated for a 2015 Oscar and Ivor Novello Award for his score to Mike Leigh’s highly acclaimed Mr Turner, Gary Yershon’s 40-year career as a composer – spanning film, television, theatre and radio – continues to grow and grow to this day.
After reading Music and Drama at Hull University, Gary pursued a parallel career as an actor up until 1991, when he gave up the limelight to focus primarily on composing. He also works as a writer, translator, musical director and teacher.
For film, Gary has collaborated extensively with the celebrated director, Mike Leigh. Their first collaboration began in 1999 with Topsy-Turvy, on which Gary was musical director. His first score for Leigh was on the iconic British comedy-drama, Happy-Go-Lucky, followed by Another Year, which gained Gary a nomination as European Film Award Best Composer, and the short film A Running Jump.
Gary has also written for TV, where his work ranges from detective drama (Trial and Retribution IX & X) to children’s cartoons (James the Cat, Ebb and Flo). He is currently working on The Hollow Crown: The Wars Of The Roses, a Neal Street co-production with Carnival/NBC Universal for BBC Two, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Judi Dench and Hugh Bonneville.
Many of Gary’s theatre scores are for the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he is an Associate Artist. He has also scored for the National Theatre, the West End and Broadway, where in 2009 he received a Drama Desk nomination for The Norman Conquests.
Gary has also written extensively for BBC Radio since 1979, beginning as a singer-songwriter for Radio 4’s Midweek. Since then Gary has composed for many plays, including The Odyssey, Gawain and the Green Knight, The Theban Plays, The Winter’s Tale, The Eve of St Agnes, Three Men in a Boat, as well as the 2002 Sony-award winning Autumn Journal. For Radio 3 he translated and dramatised Pushkin’s Ruslan and Lyudmila, and contributed to The Verb.
