Ell3

Ell3 (Liesel Haldane) is an independent musician based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Ell3 is a fusion of opposites: acoustic and electronic, East and West, folk and classical. She believes music is not a universal language in that sound is not interpreted the same way across cultures and through history. She believes that music should resonate with human emotions. She is always searching for the rasa, or essence, of sound, whether it takes the form of a traditional raga or is a simple melody. She aims not to “color the mind” but to touch the heart.

Liesel began her Indian classical music journey in 1999 as a disciple of sitarist and composer Nalini Vinayak, while attending Florida State University. She performed with many world music ensembles and was privileged to record with Nalini’s fusion group, Agni. Since graduating with her B.A. in Music in 2003, and her Masters of Architecture in 2010, Liesel recorded sitar for several bands and taught private students until relocating to California in 2015. In 2017, she released a short demo titled “Pin Feathers” under the name Strange Bird Sitar. Her current projects include exploration of Mi.Mu Gloves and Ableton Live to expand the sonic vocabulary used in her performances.