Ellis Ludwig-Leone is a composer based in Brooklyn, New York. Since coming to international attention as the songwriter behind the celebrated indie band San Fermin, he has spent the greater part of the last decade composing for the concert hall and stage. His recent works include the dance-opera The Night Falls, which premiered at PEAK Performances at Montclair State University, and False We Hope, a song cycle and string quartet written for vocalist Eliza Bagg and Attacca Quartet.
Ludwig-Leone has been the composer-in-residence for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and is a recipient of residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. His concert works have been recorded for Sony Classical and New Amsterdam Records. Together with his bandmate Allen Tate, Ludwig-Leone is a founding partner of Better Company Records, a Brooklyn-based label with an eclectic roster and an emphasis on collaboration. Headquartered out of Better Company Studios in Fort Greene, the label has seen over 150 releases from more than 50 artists since it was founded in 2020.
While at MacDowell in 2013, he wrote drafts of a 45-minute album of music and a 20-minute ballet. The residency yielded a number of serious breakthroughs that helped him synthesize different concepts he had been working through. During his 2025 residency, Ludwig-Leone wrote a 20-minute work for orchestra entitled North Woods, to be premiered by the Bangor Symphony in 2026. This piece was a commission attached to the Ellis-Beauregard Composer Award, for which Ellis was the 2024 recipient.
