Early Life 

Shirly was born and raised in Jerusalem, Israel. From a young age, she showed great talent for music. She started playing piano at the age of 4, and never stopped. At the age of 12 she got accepted to the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance High School and Conservatory, where she trained as a classical piano player. She got to play in recitals, master classes, chamber music ensembles as well as ear training and music theory education.

During high school, Shirly found her passion to rock and pop music, and began writing and recording music with her youth band. Shirly learned by herself how to compose and arrange songs for a 5 people band and recorded her first mini album at the age of 16. After high school she recorded another single with the successful Israeli musician Hemi Rodner. During that time she also volunteered in a center for at risk youth, guiding young musicians who are dealing with alcoholism and drug abuse, and providing them the opportunity to play with musicians from the music industry, including work with Sean Hurwitz, the guitarist from SmashMouth.

College & Work in Israel 

Shirly continued her musical education at Rimon School of Contemporary Music and Jazz, where she got the opportunity to be one of the first 7 students who got accepted to a new pioneering program, called “Composition, Arrangement and Conducting”. The major included advanced classes in classical and contemporary music, guided by Yaron Gottfried, former Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Netanya Kibbutz Orchestra, and frequent guest at the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. During her education in Rimon, Shirly got to compose and arrange music for full orchestra, work with leading artists, and conduct full orchestras. Her composition “Concerto for a Clown”, written for Fyodor Makarov was sold to 4 different orchestras in Israel, and was performed all around the country. She also composed music the the performance art piece Judoka, and conducted the music on the premier night. Judoka got performed in few different festivals in Israel, including the Acco International Fringe Theater Festival. She got to conduct the Netanya Kibbutz Orchestra, with Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, and her pieces were later recorded by the orchestra, as part of her professional studies with Udi Harpz - a well known Hollywood composer.

After she graduated Rimon School, she transitioned to working full time as a musician, arranger and composer. Among her work, she had a chance to work on a piece with Honi Itzkowitz - a world known Dada artist. They worked on his new play based on Shirly’s life experience, called “Feminine Concerto in D minor”. Midway through the work, Honi died from a heart attack and the production almost stopped. During Honi’s funeral Shirly got to meet all the different artists who worked with Honi over the years, and together they collaborated to create a new play, that will serve as a memoire for Honi’s life work. The play “Feminine Concerto in D minor”, ended up as a performance art piece, involving 6 Dada artists including Shirly herself. The piece premiered in the Acco Fringe Festival, and later performed 10 times in the Tel Aviv Museum and the Ramat - Gan Museum.

Shirly Also got to work on a kids musical based on the work of the Israeli composer Andre Hajdu. The musical, called “Happy Feet”, used Andre’s children’s songs in a new arrangement for 2 singers, clarinet, percussion, and piano and told a story of a child and his fairy friend, as the fairy teaches the child about the dream world. Shirly served as the musical director, arranger, and piano player. The production was under the integration department in Bar Ilan University, and after 6 performances - got adopted to the national culture theater program, and kept running even after Shirly left the country.

In 2016 Shirly got to work not only on Theater pieces, but also on several animations and short films, and had her first exposure to video game composition during the international game jam and GameIS - the Israeli video game conference. She conducted a series of lectures on music and film scoring, exposing non musicians to the stories behind famous music compositions.

Moving to Boston 

In 2017, Shirly got accepted to Berklee College of Music and in September, moved to Boston Massachusetts. Despite the difficulties with moving to a new country, Shirly decided to sign up to different hackathons and events around the Boston area. She won MIT Reality Virtually Hackathon with her application VRSO - a virtual reality symphony orchestra, controlled by hand gestures using HTC Vive and Leap Motion. Winning the hackathon was a turning point for Shirly, who decided to dedicate her Berklee education to music technology and specifically - VR. In her second semester, she founded BerkleeXR, a student club dedicated to inspiring students to pursue a career in immersive technology and spatial audio. She served as the President until she graduated, teaching dozens of students principles in AR and VR technology development.

In her second year, Shirly moved from the Film Scoring major to the Electronic Production and Design major. While she dedicated most of her education on studying music technology and perfecting her skills as a game composer and sound designer, she also took extra classes in conducting, entrepreneurship, business development and VR development. She had the opportunity to go to Silicon Valley to visit the biggest tech companies in the world, and got confirmed again that spatial audio is the direction most of the companies chose invest in. After coming back from Silicon Valley, Shirly attended MIT Reality Virtually again, and won the Unity Award and the BSO award, for her creation of “Beethven’s Love Letter” - a multi sensory experience designed based on the “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethven.

In the summer of 2018, Shirly got a job offer from the media and learning center at Berklee, and started working as a peer trainer for music hardware and software. After few months, she got promoted to a lab leader for the new immersive technology lab at berklee, where she managed a team of 8, teaching them on the usage of AR and VR hardware and software inside the lab. Shirly provided support to different classes that make use of AR and VR technology, working with over 25 headsets, various 360 cameras, ambisonic microphone, haptic suits, VR sensors, photogrammatry scanners and spatial audio plugins.

Upon her graduation, Shirly got invited to join MedVR as a mentor and expert in the VR field.She started teaching at MIT in a collaborative VR class, and also joined XR Terra as an instructor for AR/VR design cohort.

During her degree at Berklee, Shirly worked on building her own company - Virtuo Studios. Her victory with VRSO gave her the motivation to take this project and turn it into a full video game and a platform for other musicians to share their work in an immersive way.