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Biography
Composer, Ellen Fishman creates multimedia performances for audiences who crave new experiences at the intersection of art, music and technology. Her interactive works are designed to engage the audience in ways that invites choice. After awarded a 2017 Opera America Grant for Female Composers for the development of Marie Begins, a pilot of this interactive opera was produced as an online series featuring Grammy nominated soprano, Lauren Worsham. Since then, Marie Begins was selected for a workshop performance by Tri-Cities Opera for the Opera America New Works Forum in New York in January, 2018 and a full workshop was performed at Arizona State University in September 2018. After these workshops, software was completed to enable audience interaction and Marie Begins was premiered by the Opera Theater program at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in November 2020. She is currently working on an interactive work that instructs the audience how to “play along” to a performance for The Brass Project to be performed in 2022..
Ellen has worked with choreographers, artists and poets to create new performance experiences that go beyond the concert hall. Her collaborations include Remix Interactive, a work for live orchestra, playback and an interactive iOS light show in partnership with the Drexel University ExCITe Center and Mural in Motion, a soundscape and digital mural that was projected on to the side of the Fabric Workshop Building as part of collaboration with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. She collaborated with choreographer and former Martha Graham dancer, Jeanne Ruddy, between 2007-2012. Her score for Lark was described by Merilyn Jackson for “The Philadelphia Inquirer” as “a sprightly, complex 21st-century score whose swirling arpeggios harmonized well with the choreography.” As part of her work with Ms. Ruddy, she created animations of paintings by renowned painter, Elizabeth Osborne which interacted with the choreography and served as the backdrop in performances at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Suzanne Roberts Theater in Philadelphia.
Poet, Michael Heller is a long time collaborator since they met at the Yaddo Artist colony over 25 years ago. Their multimedia work, This Art Burning, a staged performance featuring new explorations in setting poetry through video, spoken work, musical accompaniment, opera and song premiered at the 2011 Philly Fringe Festival. David Patrick Stearns of “The Philadelphia Inquirer” wrote that the experience “left you wanting lots more.” Her earlier training included the study of piano, clarinet and saxophone, with emphasis on jazz improvisation. She studied music composition at San Francisco State University, University of California, Berkeley, the Peabody Conservatory, and at the Conservatoire Americain de Fontainebleau.
Her music is greatly influenced by the French composer, Gérard Grisey whom she studied with at UC Berkeley. Dr. Fishman is an Apple Distinguished Educator and is the Director of the Arts and New Media at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy where she founded the ViDCAST Studio for video, broadcasting and music production. She has presented nationally on technological approaches to teaching music composition and creating multimedia projects.
She is published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing.
OPERA America/Opera.ca Grants Awarded
Click here to learn more about OPERA America granting programs.
| GRANT NAME | YEAR | Opera Grants for Women Composers: Discovery Grants | 2017 |
There are no productions for this artist in the Season Schedule of Performances which currently only dates back to 1991.
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Artist Information
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