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Gary Yershon

Though best known for his deft and offbeat craftsmanship as a composer of arthouse film scores, Briton Gary Yershon followed the most circuitous of paths, beginning his career journey not in the music arena but as a thespian. Born in London in 1954, Yershon studied music and drama at Hull University. He appeared in several repertory productions before becoming acquainted with director Phyllida Lloyd at Cheltenham in 1991. Lloyd gently criticized his acting skills but concurrently praised his musical intuition, thus nudging him in the direction of composition. Yershon began with scoring work at such esteemed venues as the Young Vic, The Chichester Festival Theater, The Nottingham Playhouse, The Derby Playhouse and The Bristol Old Vic. Beginning in the late 1990s, he expanded his repertoire to include film work, initially as musical director on Mike Leigh's 1999 Gilbert and Sullivan opus "Topsy-Turvy" (a picture in which he also appeared, briefly, as an actor). It took nearly another decade, but by the late 2000s, Yershon began routinely authoring the scores of Leigh's pictures; their projects together include the Poppy Montgomery vehicle "Happy-Go-Lucky" (2008), the ensemble drama "Another Year" (2010), and perhaps most memorably, the J.M.W. Turner biopic "Mr. Turner" (2014), starring Timothy Spall. For his stellar work on that last assignment, Yershon picked up an Oscar nomination.