ELENA ROSS & LEON ROSS
Ross Records is the Melbourne screen music studio of Leon Ross and Elena Ross, founded in 2024.
Written in the same room.
We write together, in the same room, at the same time.
Both of us compose, produce, mix and deliver.
We bring different inspirations to our writing. Different musical backgrounds, cultures, and experiences.
The benefit of working together is that every moment, note, idea is discussed. If one of us feels emotionally affected by the music, chances are others will too.
Elena Ross & Leon Ross
Elena Ross
Elena Ross (née Elena Muratova / Alena Muratava) is a Belarusian-born composer and co-founder of Ross Records.
One of her earliest musical memories is her parents’ classical compilation tape. “I was two or three years old, and it was the first time in my life I felt euphoria – true happiness, sadness and agony all at once. It was Toccata and Fugue in D minor, by J.S. Bach.” Her first favourite film score was Titanic by James Horner. “I was mesmerised by the ethereal voice of Sissel Kyrkjebø – the soul of the ocean.”
Elena’s music education journey started with domra (traditional Belarusian instrument), guitar lessons, and singing in the school choir. At the age of sixteen, she realised her passion for composition and pursued further music education through piano, violin, and music theory lessons.
At twenty-one she moved to China, studying music production at Nanjing University of the Arts in Mandarin while continuing remote private studies in harmony and composition with Belarusian music professors – Larisa Zykova and Anzhelika Schuchenko. Over the following years Elena performed over a thousand performances as a vocalist and instrumentalist across Jiangsu province, appeared on Jiangsu TV, and collaborated with musicians from around the world.
“Revolving in the Nanjing intercultural music community was a wonderful experience for me. I was a musical sponge: always listening, always searching for unusual harmonies and melodies from different cultures.” She obtained her bachelor’s degree in musicology from Nanjing Normal University, with support from scholarships provided by the Jiangsu and Nanjing governments.In 2020 she began a Master’s in piano performance at the NNU, studying remotely while scoring films and teaching.
In 2022, Elena relocated to Melbourne, where she collaborated with Leon Ross on the Netflix film What About Sal (directed by John Jarratt) in post-production sound. They continued to collaborate on film scores together, including Their American Dream, which received the Award of Merit for Original Score at the IndieFEST Film Awards, and the main theme for The Lost Tiger, an animated feature film by Universal Pictures. Elena co-founded Ross Records with her creative partner and co-composer, Leon Ross, in 2024.
In 2025, they journeyed to Los Angeles for the Film Scoring and Conducting Intensive (LAFCI), where they immersed themselves in conducting, orchestration, and composition, learning from renowned instructors. They recorded and conducted an original composition, The Serpent, with the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra at the Eastwood Scoring Stage.
Since then, the work has ranged from The Girl In The Shadows (Best Feature, Paris Movie Awards) and It’s Showtime, Dan (dir. Dion Williams) to White Cross (recorded with Bow Tie Orchestra), Take Back (SCF Selection) and I’m Sorry for Your Loss (Flickers’ Rhode Island & Flickerfest).
Her principal instrument remains her voice. “There’s always music in my head – you just need to listen to the silence. The voice is the most natural way for me to express myself and sing what’s in my head. I trust the magic of inspiration; it’s like the air becomes different and warmer, and music ideas flow easily. It’s like listening to the radio – if you’re tuned to the right frequency, you can hear it.”
Leon Ross
Leon Ross, Australian film composer, was raised in a circus community in a small town by the ocean called Margaret River. It was around the time when he first watched a VHS recording of Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion and Alegría – “I was deeply mesmerised by the story, the experience, and the music of each show, very similar to film scoring,” he remembers.
On a family holiday in Switzerland, Leon played a cathedral pipe organ for the first time and was emotionally affected by the massive reverberations. From there the path was set – classical piano, jazz studies, then involvement in the high school orchestras as a tuned and untuned percussionist.
Being 11 years old, Leon was introduced to a software by Propellerhead – Reason. “This is where I could visualise not only MIDI but also the I/O of visual simulated devices, samplers, and synthesisers, and I could flip the rack and virtually rewire a device – hugely fascinating for me!”
Leon wrote and performed electronic music around Perth and Fremantle at events such as Fly By Night, Shape, and Parker before studying sound production at SAE Institute and classical composition at WAAPA – admitted to both under special consideration, the youngest in both courses.
At the age of 17 he moved to Melbourne to study film scoring at Box Hill Institute. For several years, Leon was mentored by George Papanicolaou, where they collaborated on films together such as SHED (Screen Australia), JARLI, and other films for composition, sound design, and film mixes at Original Score Studios.
In 2018, Leon was awarded Student of the Year at BHI, sponsored by Ableton and Native Instruments, and then was granted the DVA Long Tan Bursary, which helped him with studies for the Master’s Degree in Screen Composition at Thinkspace (University of Chichester) and graduated in 2020.
What About Sal (Netflix, dir. John Jarratt) was among the first projects Leon and Elena took on together, both working in post-production sound. After this film, Leon and Elena started to work together on just about everything, both for music and sound – such as Their American Dream (Award of Merit for Original Score at the IndieFEST Film Awards) and their main music theme for The Lost Tiger on Universal Pictures.
Alongside this, Leon lectures in film scoring at Box Hill Institute, where he has helped supervise collaborations between Swinburne University, Deakin University and BHI. “Those collaborations helped me most as a student, so I wanted to give back – to as many students and projects as I could.”
From 2022 to 2025, Leon Ross worked in Box Hill Institute’s music technician department, managing and maintaining studios built around rooms and equipment from the legendary Sing Sing East. Day-to-day work on the 72-channel SSL XL9000K, API 1608, Avid S6 and Dolby Atmos post-production room gave him deep hands-on expertise – knowledge that later helped with the design of Ross Records studios, co-founded with Elena Ross in 2024. They built a music facility studio in Collingwood, Melbourne, in 2025 – a welcoming and cosy studio space perfect for writing scores, recording, meeting filmmakers and all creatives.
In 2025 Leon and Elena travelled to Los Angeles for the Film Scoring and Conducting Intensive (LAFCI), studying conducting, orchestration, composition and industry workflow from Angel Velez, Conrad Pope, Jeff Russo, Maclaine Diemer, Emilie Bernstein, David Guili and Booker White. They recorded and conducted their own composition – The Serpent – with the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra at the Eastwood Scoring Stage.
Since then, the work has ranged from The Girl In The Shadows (Best Feature – Paris Movie Awards), and It’s Showtime, Dan (dir. Dion Williams), to White Cross (recorded with Bow Tie Orchestra), Take Back (SCF Selection), and I’m Sorry for Your Loss (Flickers’ Rhode Island & Flickerfest).
EVERY STORY CALLS FOR A NEW APPROACH
Every story is unique and requires a special treatment. It’s like planting a seed and letting it grow. Sometimes that means chasing new technology and new ways of working; sometimes it means returning to the past and studying the works of the great composers. We love to innovate and be bold.
We love writing in the studio – but given the chance to compose and record inside an Egyptian pyramid, we’ll be on the first plane! Every collaboration teaches us something: every musician, every director, every new experience. And we’ve learnt that to find something truly important, you sometimes have to be lost first.
TESTIMONIALS
Stephen Knight · The Girl In The Shadows
Daniel Di Giovanni · actor & producer, It’s Showtime, Dan
Crystal Nappo & Frank Nappo · Fifteen
Paris Movie Awards 2026
Berlin Indie Film Festival 2026
Titan International Film Festival
MIFF
Have a project?
Tell us about the film and we will come back to you.