Ella Malherbe is a Swiss and Irish composer and singer-songwriter based in Switzerland.

A songwriter at heart, she is passionate about narration, dramaturgy and timing and blends her love for pop music with intricate soundscapes blending electronics and orchestration.

Ella co-founded the duo Marzella (2009-2025), which was broadcast globally across the country’s radio stations as well as on BBC 6 Music, BBC Ulster and BBC 5 live, and has performed in major venues such as the O2 Shepherd’s Bush London, Montreux Jazz Festival, Estivale, Gurten Festival, and Zermatt Unplugged.

Over the past five years, Ella has composed for a variety of productions ranging from contemporary dance companies to film projects. She joined the Swiss Film Academy in 2023 for her co-composition of the soundtrack for the award-winning documentary Cascadeuses (2022). She was also nominated for Best Sound Design at the One Fluid Night Festival 2024 in London for the short film Lungs by Adrianna Polcyn, for which she also composed the original score. For the documentary web-series Dünns Iis (2023, Laura Weber), she recorded her compositions with the Synchron Stage Orchestra in Vienna (Dune : Prophecy, American Fiction, Call The Midwife, The Crown).

In 2024, she spent a month in South Korea after being admitted to the Shared Campus Summer School in Seoul, and was also selected the same year to develop an inter-university project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the Yared School of Music. In March 2025, she spent two weeks in Marseille, having composed for the orchestral residency Regards Croisés at the Festival Musique et Cinéma Marseille.

Trained at the British & Irish Institute of Modern Music in London in Creative Musicianship & Music for Moving Image for her Bachelor's degree, and at MDH in Los Angeles in Respiratory Coordination, she holds Master of Arts in Composition for Film, Theatre and Media at the prestigious Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).