Sargen, E., Ma, B., Davies, S. (2021). Building a community new music ensemble over Zoom. Presented at Music and/as process, University of Wolverhampton.
CREATIVE OUTPUTS:
Ellen was the Music Director for Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) Manchester from 2020 to 2024. This is a group of all-abilities instrumentalists who realise performances through improvisation and engaging with many types of open score (including graphic, text, video). Significant projects included the culmination of their Arts Council funded ‘Streaming Blue’ project (2021-2022). This was in partnership with Groundwork Manchester and invited different local communities to explore their connection to local rivers and waterways through sound and music. This project included commissions, three days of concerts, an exhibition and workshops with youth groups. The project later extended to working with RNCM undergraduates on composing for an all-abilities ensemble, where students took their inspiration from the same theme. See write-up here.
The group were also involved in Zubin Kanga’s Cyborg Soloists project where they worked with Mark Dyer on his piece Mensura for wearable metronomes. This was performed in a partnership concert with CoMA Sheffield and Music in the Round on 8 October 2023. Ellen also directed the group in two nation-wide CoMA festivals (2022 and 2024), RNCM PLAY festival (2021) and the Chorlton Arts Festival (2023).
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.
Ellen Sargen 