Composer Ellen Reid has lived in a lot of places: she grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, went to college in New York City, and spent a couple years in Thailand before settling in California, where she ultimately found her creative voice.
Ellen’s love of sounds and music blossomed early; she was fascinated by the natural world, sang in her church choir, and studied piano and percussion in school. She didn't meet another female composer until she was 25, and never dreamed writing music could be a viable career path.
Ellen is inspired by landscape, emotions and storytelling. She started composing her sophomore year of college, writing a musical and creating sound design for theater and film productions, before “stumbling into opera” working with Thai musicians in Thailand. Her beautifully-wrought music easily creates a sense of place, whether physical or emotional, conjuring sunlit valleys, heartbreak, craggy cliffsides, joy, or bustling cityscapes.
“Reid, in a word, has arrived.”
Official Bio
Ellen Reid is one of the most innovative artists of her generation. An American composer and sound artist whose breadth of work spans opera, sound design, film scoring, avant-pop, ensemble and choral writing. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for her opera, p r i s m, in 2019. Reid's orchestral work has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, among many others.
Reid created Ellen Reid SOUNDWALK, a GPS-enabled work of public art that reimagines urban parks as interactive soundscapes. SOUNDWALK premiered in New York's Central Park, and continues to expand to urban parkland around the world, including Los Angeles' Griffith Park, London's Regent's Park & Primrose Hill, and Tokyo's Ueno Park. An album of music written for the project, Big Majestic, was released on New Amsterdam / Eclipse Projects. Its featured performers include the Kronos Quartet, Shabaka Hutchings, James McVinnie, and Lisel.
Reid is known for her dynamic, lyrical film scores, and she has worked with A24, Amazon Studios, and the Duplass Brothers Productions. Her work has been featured at film festivals including SXSW, IFC Fest, TriBeCa Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival. Her concert work was also an inspiration for artist Alex Prager’s short film RUN.
In 2016, Reid co-founded Luna Composition Lab with composer Missy Mazzoli. The organization provides mentorship, education, and resources for young female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming composers ages 13-18, and is the only initiative of its kind in the United States.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize for Music, Ellen Reid’s p r i s m was the winner of the Music Critics Association of North America award for Best New Opera in 2019. Reid is a recipient of Lincoln Center's Emerging Artist Award, she has been one of Musical America’s 30 Professionals of the Year, and she is a Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program Grantee.
Born in Oak Ridge Tennessee in 1983, Ellen Reid received her BFA from Columbia University and her MA from California Institute of the Arts. Ellen Reid has served as the Contemporary Music Chair of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and she is currently the first composer to be in residence with both Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Concert Hall and Concertgebouw Orchestra simultaneously. Ellen Reid’s music is exclusively published by Chester Music, part of the Wise Music Group. She continues to live and work in New York City and Los Angeles.