Ellen Fullman is an American composer and instrument builder, trained as a sculptor at the Kansas City Art Institute. In 1980, in her studio in St Paul, Minnesota, she began building the Long String Instrument, and the following year she moved to Brooklyn, where it developed into her life’s work. She has cited Harry Partch and Alvin Lucier’s Music on a Long Thin Wire as key influences.
The instrument consists of dozens of very long wires stretched across a room and tuned in just intonation. The performer walks slowly along them, stroking the strings lengthwise with rosined hands, so that they vibrate longitudinally and release a droning, organ-like halo of upper partials. Its first album, The Long String Instrument, was issued by Apollo in 1985 and reissued in 2015. Later records include Harbors (Room40, 2020) with the cellist Theresa Wong, and she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition in 2020.