In 1981 Ellen Fullman began developing the “Long String Instrument,” in which rosin-coated fingers brush across dozens of metallic strings, fifty or more feet in length and installed in a performance space. Listening to the instrument has been compared to the experience of standing inside an enormous grand piano. Her work explores natural tunings based on the overtone series and the physics of vibrating strings. A unique notation system choreographs the performer’ movements, exploring the influences of sympathetic resonance and sonic events that occur at specific nodal point locations along the string-length of the instrument. The music has a multi-dimensional quality: threads of resultant melodic fragments emerge and intertwine, unfolding with a natural logic.

Fullman has recorded extensively with this unusual instrument and has collaborated with such luminary figures as composer Pauline Oliveros, choreographer Deborah Hay, the Kronos Quartet, Keiji Haino and Francis-Marie Uitti. In 2000 she was awarded the prestigious DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency. Her music was represented in The American Century; Art and Culture, 1950-2000 at The Whitney Museum, and she has performed in venues and festivals in Europe, Japan and North America including: Instal, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Other Minds, the Walker Art Center and Donaueschinger Musiktage. Her CD release “Ort”, with Berlin-based collaborator Jörg Hiller, was selected as one of the top 50 recordings of 2004 by The Wire (London). She has written articles on her work published in Experimental Musical Instrument (1985 and 1998), MusikTexte (Cologne 2002), and MusicWorks (Toronto 2003). Fullman has delivered lectures and conducted workshops for many venues including the Songlines series at Mills College, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle and Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart. Her collaboration with percussionist Sean Meehan at Instal 2006 was the number one downloaded track from the festival and was released on Cut (Switzerland). In 2007 she was awarded a
5-month Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission/NEA Fellowship for Japan where she studied the Ainu tonkori, sho and koto. Fullman was awarded an Aaron Copland Fund grant for her CD release with trombonist Monique Buzzarté on Deep Listening, February 2008. Fullman has been awarded a Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito) residency from September through December, 2008, where she will install her instrument in what was once the old gymnasium. A segment of the Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival is planned for September 20 at the Headlands featuring her compositions and collaborations.

Visit Ellen Fullman's website here: http://www.ellenfullman.com/