© Todd V. Wolfson

Ellen Fullman’s career in music was launched at age one, when Elvis Presley kissed her hand. At thirteen she impersonated Janis Joplin for her grade school talent show. She went on to earn a BFA in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute, leading her to create her "Metal Skirt Sound Sculpture," which she wore to perform Streetwalker at the 1980 New Music America festival in Minneapolis. Soon after, Fullman accidentally discovered the sound of longitudinally vibrating long strings. Since then, she has been developing the Long String Instrument (LSI), and its abundant possibilities. Fullman has presented her work in art spaces, festivals, and museums in the United States and in Europe. She has received numerous awards and commissions from organizations including the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, New Forms Regional Initiative, and Meet the Composer. Most recently, she was commissioned by the Artist Trust Fellowship in (1999), and was awarded a one-year residency in Berlin from the Deutcher Akademisher Austauschdienst (2000). Also, her music was represented in The American Century; Art and Culture, 1950-2000, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Recordings of her work appear on the New Albion, Columbia, XI, Apollo, and Deep Listening record labels. Fullman teaches composition classes and sound meditation at "The Candy Factory," her studio in Seattle.

Ellen Fullman has been developing the Long String Instrument for more than twenty years, and it has evolved into an astounding expression of artistic individuality. The instrument is based on the longitudinal mode of vibration, with one hundred long wires strung over approximately ninety feet. The strings are attached to the soundboard, much in the same way a harp is constructed. The string goes through a hole in the soundboard, a loop is made, a pin is set in the loop, then the string is pulled against that and attached to the wall at the other end of the room. Some of the wires pass through resonator boxes at sixty and thirty feet, and the bass wires extend for the full distance. Tuning is accomplished in just intonation with ‘C’ clamps at harmonic intervals. The instrument is played is by stroking the string with rosin-covered hands and walking along its length, creating a compression wave, rather than a transverse wave, which would result from the action of plucking. Fullman has also developed various extended techniques to evoke different textures from the instrument. "The quality of the sound has an endless character, approaching infinity," says New Albion Records.