IN Higher education

Ellen has delivered guest lectures on collaborative composition for Leeds Conservatoire and was previously employed by the University of Sheffield as Composition Teaching Assistant. She was contracted through the Royal Northern College of Music to coach composition students to write for mixed abilities instrumental ensembles (see work with CoMA Manchester below) and has taught as a graduate teaching assistant at the RNCM from 2020-2023.

IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS – Wecompose

Employed by Music in the Round, Ellen is currently producing ‘WeCompose’, a project designed to introduce KS3 and KS4 students to composition up and down the country. Working in close partnership with Andrew Smith and John Webb to plan and produce the project, Ellen has written composition resources used by teachers across Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley, Portsmouth and Milton Keynes. In 2023 Ellen worked with 175 students in their classrooms to compose music for Wind Quintet. You can read about the project here.

IN THE COMMUNITY – COMA MANCHESTER

Ellen is the Music Director for CoMA Manchester. Significant recent projects have included the culmination of their Arts Council funded ‘Streaming Blue’ project and their partnership concert with CoMA Sheffield and Music in the Round on 8 October.

Their interpretation of Lorna Green’s video score ‘Big Stones’ is playing at the Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery from 18 October until 18 November 2022. Ellen presented alongside committee members Bofan Ma and Shaun Davies at ‘Music and/as Process’ conference 2021. Their talk was titled CoMA Manchester: Building a community new music ensemble over Zoom’. It can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/J4O8HHYBtZ4.

CoMA Manchester have featured in the RNCM PLAY festival (2021) and the Chorlton Arts Festival (2023).

composing for communuty & education

Ellen’s piece ‘Living things, toxic air & cuticles’ (2023) was written in collaboration with CoMA Manchester with guest soloists and recorded with funding from the North West Consortium in September 2023. Ellen has produced open scores as teaching resources and presented seminars as a GTA at the RNCM on composing for Community & Education.