Artists

Biography:

Ellie Choate is a versatile harpist in Southern and Central California. She has performed classical music in chamber, opera, and symphony groups such as Opera Santa Barbara, the Southern California Brass Consortium, CalArts New Century Players, and most recently with the San Bernardino Symphony. She and harpist Jacquelyn Venter formed Duo Pangelica, performing classical harp repertoire.

Ellie’s career spans work in the commercial music industry, with performances on and off camera in major motion pictures, television, and sound recordings such as Ratatouille, Mission Impossible, Ray Charles’ Genius Loves Company, Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, and Josh Groban’s PBS special. She also can be seen backing headline artists, such as Jennifer Hudson at the Ravinia festival. A favorite collaboration is with soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian in concerts and recordings of Armenian children’s songs.

Her interest in arranging and improvisation has resulted in five solo CDs of her stylings of pop and jazz tunes, Christmas and Inspirational music. Her lifelong love of teaching and community building has led her to work as an officer for The American Harp Society and American String Teachers Association. She has published arrangements for harp ensemble and is currently on the applied music faculty of CSU Long Beach and UC Irvine.