Ellen Kirkwood BMus (Hons Class 1, Jazz performance and composition) is a composer, trumpeter, bandleader and educator from Sydney, Australia. She was the 2012 winner of the Jann Rutherford Memorial Award for young women in Jazz, winner of the 2019 NSW APRA Art Music Award for Jazz Excellence, and a recipient of the 2021 APRA Art Music Fund grant. She was a finalist in the 2017 Freedman Jazz Fellowships, and her groundbreaking [A]part suite for big band was a finalist for Jazz Work of the Year in the 2018 APRA Art Music Awards. She has received many composition commissions including a work for FONT Trumpet Festival 2020, and released three albums of original work. She currently leads contemporary jazz quartet Underwards, performs regularly with several successful Sydney-based ensembles, and is the director of the Young Women's Jazz Orchestra, established in 2016.

Sounds Like: Darcy James Argue, Maria Schneider