Committed to pushing the boundaries of harp performance, Jennifer R. Ellis (D.M.A. University of Michigan, M.M. Cleveland Institute of Music, B.M. Oberlin) has performed over ninety premieres. She embraces firsts; she was the first harpist to be a U.S. State Department One Beat Fellow and the first harpist to attend Bang on a Can, Fresh Inc., and Splice summer festivals. She has served as a featured performer for the Festival of New American Music, Sound of Late, Spitting Image Collective, Kerrytown Edgefest, Creative Arts Orchestra, and OINC. Her recordings run the gamut from American Indian Fusion (Dha Re Dha with Sumkali) to solo improvisation (“January Lullaby” on Persist) to new music for harp and saxophone (Launch with Jonathan Hulting-Cohen on Albany Records). Her passion for composer education has led her to provide workshops for composers at institutions including University of California Davis, Cal State University Sacramento, Bowling Green State University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Miami University, University of Hartford, University of Michigan, Cleveland State University, and University of North Carolina Greensboro. She was a 2017-2018 Artist-In-Residence at UC Davis, faculty at the 2018 Nief Norf Summer Institute, and currently teaches harp at Mills College and community engagement at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.