Ellen Fullman

For over four decades, American composer, instrument builder and performer Ellen Fullman has maintained a singular focus on her project The Long String Instrument, an installation of dozens of tuned strings fifty feet or more in length which have resonated architectural spaces in festivals across the world including Tectonics Athens, the Sydney Festival and the London Contemporary Music Festival. Through her research in just intonation tuning theory, string harmonics and musical instrument design, Fullman has developed a compositional and performative approach that expands harmonic motion through a focus on upper partial tones.  

Fullman has been the recipient of numerous awards, commissions and residencies, including the Special Awards in the Arts by the Gerbode Foundation and a Guggenheim Fellowship for Music Composition in 2020, a Grant of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2015, a Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship for Japan by Japan-US Friendship Commission/NEA in 2007 and the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program residency in 2000. 

Her recordings include, among others, Harbors (Room40, 2020), a collaboration with Theresa Wong, and The Long String Instrument (Superior Viaduct, 2015), first issued on Apollo Records in 1985 and selected as the number one reissue for 2015 by The Wire. 

In 2016 Fullman was the Distinguished Alumni Speaker and Guest Critic at the Kansas City Art Institute. Her work was cited by Alvin Lucier in his book Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music (Wesleyan University Press, 2012). 

As of October 2025