Yshani Perinpanayagam

“Being a composer is like reading your diary out loud”

Yshani is a composer, pianist and music director from London, specialising in not specialising.

As a relatively new composer, her sound is currently an ever-evolving mash-up of her varied musical tastes and personal worlds; this currently includes elements of contemporary classical music, dirty grooves, Sri Lankan parents, game and play, melancholy, and activism.

What does being Yshani’s patron look like?

Yshani is in touch fairly regularly with her patrons, sharing early drafts of new work, personal revelations about her process and improvised experimentations on rough-and-ready material, peppered with thoughtful and funny reflections on her journey as she continues to find her feet as a composer.

She also shares insights into her performance career as a improv pianist on stage, conducting in an orchestra pit, in a recording studio and beyond!

Supporting a composer on Music Patron gives you a first-hand perspective on the many elements within the creative process, and an understanding of an authentic journey of a composer. You can find out more about what it’s like to be a patron here 

Biography

As a composer, commissions include works for the London Sinfonietta, Onyx Brass, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Sound and Music, and music for a play about Fanny Mendelssohn.

As a multi-genre pianist and music director, Yshani has performed at venues from Wigmore Hall to the London Palladium, at events from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival to the Barbican Mime Festival, and with artists from the Philharmonia to Nina Conti. She is pianist of the Del Mar Piano Trio and Carismático Tango Band, and a regular guest broadcaster on BBC Radio 3.

Yshani was music director for triple-Oliver winner Emilia at the Vaudeville Theatre, Olivier nominated Goat by Ben Duke for Rambert Dance Company, King John and The Whip for the Royal Shakespeare Company, As You Like It for National Theatre Public Acts, for circus troupe Circa at the Barbican, and with Olivier award winning show Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. She was Consultant MD for Olivier Award winning Wolf Witch Giant Fairy at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre. Most recently, she was conductor/arranger for Longborough Opera’s 2022 Caccini / Waley-Cohen programme, and pianist / music director for Ruination with Lost Dog Dance at Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre. Yshani is currently music director of new opera The F**gots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Philip Venables & Ted Huffman, and English Touring Opera’s The Coronation of Poppea.

Listen See How They Run; – Workshop performance by Ligeti Quartet

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Recent updates from Yshani

3 October 2023

🔒 Re-railing my creativity

I respond to an impromptu playlist in real time in an effort to nourish my creativity. It genuinely seems to have dom...

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30 July 2023

🔒 Scary Commission 🎃

I can’t believe I’m being let loose on this commission – swinging between being frozen in fear to f...

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26 June 2023

🔒 How am I today?

Just a little update with bits and pieces or premieres and publishings while I have my hands pretty full with a show ...

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12 May 2023

🔒 Another Speed-Carol!

I speed-wrote a carol for an anthology! I discovered unexpected things about what seems to make a carol a carol.

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12 April 2023

🔒 Could it be more composer growth?!

I broke a pattern and avoided making one of my favourite mistakes. Who knew this was possible? Let’s enjoy this...

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2 April 2023

🔒 Short film commission a.k.a. “The Collaborat...

Fruits of a collaboration failure! I thought it would be fun to share something that nobody else will ever hear!

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4 comments
23 March 2023

🔒 Premiere Night: Mini-Update

Feeling lots of big feelings as a composer and as a human ahead of the premiere of my Music for

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11 March 2023

🔒 A little squashed, a little bruised.

Is this a diary entry? Is this a big life, self and career realisation? I can’t see the wood for the trees at t...

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31 January 2023

🔒 Composer Growth? A Rambling

This month has been really revealing for me in terms of how my artistic intersectionality impacts me as specifically a

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30 January 2023

🔒 An important memory

Doing my tax return and going through old diaries lets me relive – whether I want to or not – my past mon...

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2 January 2023

🔒 The pianist meets the composer?

I’ve loved music directing / performing in Ruination at Royal Opera House. In addition, I really fell in love with

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19 December 2022

🔒 Mini-update a.k.a. A teenage composer in a grown-u...

More on that string trio… Shh! Don’t tell anyone 😇🤫

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12 December 2022

🔒 The Music Patron Q&A

A series of interviews with our Music Patron composers talking about their musical inspirations and what life as a co...

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26 November 2022

🔒 The earliest of drafts!

Who knows if this will survive the night?! I’ve been asked to write a string trio for a concert next

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26 November 2022

🔒 It’s a premiere night 🤩

About to make my way to the premiere of a song I wrote with Laura Attridge; here’s a little about

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24 October 2022

🔒 Supersonic Mirth 🎄

I saw a call-out for Christmas Carols and figured it presented me with a good excuse to write another one.

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9 September 2022

🔒 Replugging in my creativity

Returning to London having conducted and arranged a baroque opera left me quite out of touch with the boundary-free s...

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20 July 2022

🔒 I’m back from the depths of Arrangerland (so...

Just me chatting to the camera in a heat wave about everything I’ve been up to preparing for opening our produc...

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8 June 2022

🔒 Bits of Me: Video 1

The first in a series of videos where I introduce myself to you properly. Here is a behind the scenes video of me and...

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19 May 2022

🔒 There she is!

She’s been opening a show! Here’s a sneak peak of what I’ve been up to, MDing Passion by Sondheim i...

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13 May 2022

🔒 Who do you think I am?

A little introduction to how I’d like us to write a little piece together…

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8 May 2022

🔒 Composer Commentary: i only bite because you make ...

Me chatting away about how and why my piece for piano synchronised to a perfect game of snake came into

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4 comments
8 April 2022

🔒 New Patrons – Thank You…and Welcome!

Thank you so much for your support. Here’s a little more on about how I am hoping to use this

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