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Jazz Articles about Don Ellis
Don Ellis: Live In 3 2/3 /4 Time
by Jim Santella
Don Ellis wrote and arranged in unusual meters, and yet was able to make each composition swing. He’d drive home the time signature to his audience by providing for congas, timbales, cowbell and three double basses to repeat the meter in an ostinato fashion. And of course the whole band would get into the action, accenting where appropriate to achieve 5, 7, 11, 13 or 19 beats to the measure. Eventually the trumpeter would step in and improvise over that ...
Continue ReadingDon Ellis: Live At Monterey
by Jim Santella
In the liner notes Leonard Feather called Don Ellis “the Stan Kenton of the 1970s." After earning a degree in music composition at Boston University, the trumpeter interned with several big bands, Latin jazz bands, Charles Mingus, and George Russell. Expanding his study of ethnomusicology at UCLA, Ellis formulated ideas about innovative ways to “break the rules" of rhythm and harmony in jazz. Espousing third stream and free jazz, the trumpeter played a specially made four-valve model that enabled him ...
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