Swingbridge is the musical vehicle of Otago songsmith Bridget Ellis. Playing solo or with an expandable band, her engaging real-world songs journey through intricate folk to spacious jazz, from punchy rock to uncharted country, and are delivered home with incidental fun.
Ellis discovered her affinity with songwriting as a teenager in the vibrant musical world of 1980’s Dunedin. The power of song to interpret and share the human experience became her touch stone, the impetus and hope for earth-centred social change an enduring muse. A self taught guitarist, Ellis has developed her unique musical style, experimenting with guitar tunings, sounding chords by ear and the rhythm of reflex. This and her authentic lyricism has assured many of these songs an enduring place in her life spanning songbook.
Ellis has followed where the music’s led, from busking the Berlin underground to playing the Beehive. She has taken her uplifting music to prisons, schools and hospices, libraries, festivals, pubs, and concert halls.
Following study of Contemporary Performance at the Nelson School of Music, Ellis independently released her first two albums, Sing Me To Sea 1999, and Emptiest Fullness 2001 in collaboration with jazz musician and composer Trevor Coleman.
Swingbridge’s 2021’s release The Garden is Ellis’s most ambitious recording project yet. The seeds of the album were sown through Ellis’s collaboration with singer/celtic harpist Lynley Caldwell and later recorded at Roundhead Studio, Auckland and Sublime Studio in the Waitaki Valley. The album was co-produced by Ellis alongside engineer Jordan Stone (NZ Engineer of the year 2019), and features Lynley Caldwell vocals/harp along with landmark NZ drummer Chris O’Connor, double bassists Eamon Edmundson-Wells and Steve Harrop, with guest singer Steve Abel.
Ellis lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin where she works as a musician and filmmaker.