Ellen Mandel has composed music for many plays for the Mint, Jean Cocteau Rep, and Riverside Shakespeare in New York, the Asolo, Peterborough Players, Arkansas Rep, Tennessee Rep, and other regionals. She has written five film scores, and recorded three CDs: EVERY PLAY'S AN OPERA, a collection of her theatre music, A WIND HAS BLOWN THE RAIN AWAY, her E.E. Cummings songs, and THE FIRST OF ALL MY DREAMS, new songs with lyrics by Cummings, Seamus Heaney, William Butler Yeats, and others.