Ellen Sargen
Ellen Sargen is a composer and flautist born in Sheffield. Working from within long and short term composer-performer collaborations, Ellen’s music often brings together unusual combinations of instruments to create new ensembles and sounds. Her music has been performed by the Ligeti Quartet, Ensemble 360, NotaBene Ensemble, Tom Poster’s Kaleidoscope Collective and by performers including Sarah Watts, Simon Twigge, Jonathan Ayerst, Chris Pidcock and Zi Lan Liao among others across the UK and in Europe.
Ellen’s trio for horn, double bass and piano was commissioned by Music in the Round for their Chamber Festival in 2018 and a new work for soprano, contrabass clarinet and prepared percussion was commissioned for International Women’s Day through Classical Sheffield in 2019. Her music has been programmed in Lost and Sound’s ‘pop-up’ series in Sydney, Australia, in the University of Sheffield’s ‘forged in Sheffield’ and ‘sound laboratory’ series’ and also at Darmstadt International Music Festival, Leeds Lieder Festival, Cheltenham Music Festival and Landesmusikakademie Ochsenhausen in student concerts.
Ellen completed her BMus in Music with a high first (2017) and MA in Composition with distinction (2018) at The University of Sheffield, studying with Dorothy Ker and George Nicholson. She received the Gibbons Prize, the Mrs Stewart Blake BMus Prize and the Phillip John Lord Prize during this time. Ellen is currently studying for her PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music with Larry Goves and Steven Daverson, funded by the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership.