The Australian Haydn Ensemble (AHE) has launched its Composer in Residence program for 2025, an initiative designed to support and celebrate the creativity of contemporary Australian music-making. Ella Macens will be AHE’s inaugural Composer in Residence, and will work with AHE’s Emerging Composers Workshops to foster an environment in which established and emerging talents can collaborate, learn and inspire one another.

Bridging the worlds of contemporary music and the classical tradition, Macens is a highly regarded and innovative voice, known for her ability to craft evocative, moving works.

Ella Macens. Photo supplied

As Composer in Residence, Macens will create a new work, to be premiered in the Beethoven’s Eighth concert series, inspired by Beethoven’s letters to Josephine Brunsvik-Deym-Stackelberg, the woman thought to be Beethoven’s ‘immortal beloved’. This reflects AHE’s desire to explore the intersection between historical performance practices and modern composition, bringing to light new angles or previously unknown aspects of the life or work of Classical era composers to create a dialogue between past and present.

Macens completed a Bachelor of Music (Composition) with first class honours at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In 2016 she was one of four composers selected...