Artist: Don Ellis
Don Ellis was an American jazz trumpeter, drummer, composer, and bandleader.
He graduated from Boston University in 1956 with a music composition degree. Ellis' first job was with the late Glenn Miller's band, and he stayed with the band until September 1956, when he joined the U.S. Army's Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra and the Soldiers' Show Company. Ellis was transferred to Frankfurt, Germany for duty. In the Army band, Ellis met pianist Cedar Walton, and saxophonists Eddie Harris and Don Menza. While in that band Ellis had his first opportunity to compose and arrange for a big band.
After two years, Don Ellis left the Army band and moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, and became involved in the New York City avant-garde jazz scene. He appeared on albums by Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, and George Russell, working in that sextet for two years.
Ellis formed the Improvisational Workshop Orchestra, which gave its debut performance on February 10, 1963 at the Five Spot. Some uncommon musical elements were employed, such as the use of Arabian rhythms and scales, and foot shuffling.
In 1964, Ellis began graduate studies in ethnomusicology at UCLA where he studied with Indian musician Harihar Rao. Greatly inspired by Rao, Ellis sought to implement odd meters in a Western improvised context and (with Rao) co-authored the 1965 article "An Introduction to Indian Music for the Jazz Musician".
While in New York, Ellis was involved with several Third Stream projects. A live performance from February 8, 1964, at the Lincoln Center was filmed for Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts series. In November 1967, Ellis's first symphony, "Contrasts for Two Orchestras and Trumpet", was debuted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta. Returning to the West Coast, Ellis formed The Hindustani Jazz Sextet, which explored some of the concepts he had learned at UCLA. The Sextet is generally considered to be the first band of its kind in America.
Ellis continued writing arrangements for and rehearsing what would grow into the Don Ellis Orchestra. This rehearsal/workshop band played every Monday night for almost a year, first at a venue called Club Havana and later relocating to a club called Bonesville in Hollywood, where they began to gain a significant following.
The Don Ellis Orchestra was different from most other big bands in several ways; most obviously in its instrumentation and incorporation of Indian musical elements into modern big-band writing. Drawing from his compositional and arranging experience, as well as from his studies of Indian music, Ellis began to write jazz-based music with the time signatures he had studied with Rao. These included not only 5/4, 7/8, and 9/4, but also more complex rhythmic cycles like 19/8 and 27/16.
Ellis's final album for Columbia, Connection, was recorded in August 1972. The album featured "The Theme from 'The French Connection'", an abbreviated version of Ellis's movie score, and "Chain Reaction", a 13/8 tour de force by longtime contributor Hank Levy. Alongside these highlights are arrangements of several pop songs by artists such as Carole King, Yes, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and The Carpenters. The arrangements were generally tongue-in-cheek; often Ellis arranged them in different meters than the original or arranged for the melody to be played in a humorous way. There is no singer on this album.
In 1977, Ellis was signed to Atlantic Records, which promised to fund the Orchestra's upcoming trip for the band's performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. The band's performance at Montreux was well received, and the subsequent album reached No. 48 on the Billboard jazz charts. This was to be Ellis's last album as a leader, although he would appear on albums by Nick Gilder (You Know Who You Are) and Tommy Vig (1978).
Ellis also wrote numerous articles and several books. The New Rhythm Book (1972) presents methods of practice and performance in unusual meters and features a companion play-along LP/cassette entitled New Rhythms. His second book, Quarter Tones, published in 1975, is a theoretical guide to using quarter tones. Both books are thorough, providing a great deal of historical and cultural background to their subjects. Quarter Tones also provides readers with etudes and exercises.
Further information about Don Ellis is found at DonEllisMusic.com.
This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Ellis, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
Don Ellis "Concerto For Trumpet" on The Ed Sullivan Show
Don Ellis: Videos
Don Ellis 1977 (01) Open Wide
Don Ellis - Indian Lady - Tanglewood (Full)