Five-Star Collection... Don Ellis

The Don Ellis Quintet

New Ideas

It was my intention to present in this album a variety of moods, settings and approaches. These are all separate pieces but they were chosen with the effect of the album as a whole in mind. All five musicians do not play on every composition. Certain moods and ideas are more effective in different settings. There is no reason why, just because you have five members of a group, you have to keep five musicians playing all the time.

I believe in making use of as wide a range of expressive techniques as possible. I have been working to develop my playing, writing and personality to this end. Jazz is supposed to be expressive. Why place limits on expressiveness? Why not endeavor to make music as interesting as possible for the performer and listener? All the players here have a thorough control over their respective instruments and the techniques of "standard" jazz improvising (playing on chord progressions) and they are able as well to create without chord progressions and on tone clusters and tone rows. They are not limited in their approach to a mere ignoring of the changes to sound "far out", but have the ability to control both the horizontal and vertical elements of the music. I do not believe that lack of technique and/or knowledge gives "freedom" in improvising, but rather, the more technique and knowledge we have — the more choices are open to us in our improvising — and therefore the "freer" we are, because we are less limited. *Don Ellis (from the liner notes)*

Some seven months elapsed after the recording of Ellis' controversial first album, How Time Passes (Candid 8004), before this Prestige/New Jazz collection was done. Ellis' work here is, if anything, even more stimulating and exhilarating — certainly it's thorny enough! — than his provocative writing and improvising in the earlier collection.

There are several reasons for this. For one, this disc attempts a far-wider-ranging program of moods and effects than did the Candid. It seems to me that they're brought off more successfully here, too.

As far as the technical means used to achieve these effects are concerned, this collection is more ambitious in scope and realization and, in this sense, is more truly representative of Ellis' sure mastery of several disciplines. These range from near-conventional improvising (Natural H.) through atonal and serial techniques (Tragedy and Imitation), on to a wholly improvised ensemble piece based on indeterminacy principles (Despair to Hope), and a lengthy extemporized trumpet Solo that is completely effective.

This collection I find brilliant in every respect. Ellis' compelling music warrants complete attention if only for the freshness, ingenuity, and striking originality of its conception. The five-star commendation might legitimately be awarded for this reason alone.

Yet, beyond this, the execution of the music is itself particularly stunning. The five men play together remarkably well, as if with a single mind, reflecting a unity of conception, a rapport, and a desire to serve the best ends of the music. The results certainly rank with the finest jazz of the last decade.

Ellis and vibraharpist Francis, who, with this disc, makes an impressive debut, and pianist Byard are members of the steadily swelling jazz avant garde, leading proponents of the "new thing". They are younger musicians who have come to the fore in the last two years and who, it has been said, are breaking with traditional jazz practices in their explorations. This album offers a gripping illustration that what Ellis, at least, is doing hardly constitutes a break with jazz' past but, rather, represents a brilliantly logical development of jazz conventions and practices.

There is no reason why a jazz musician should not bring the whole of his musical sensibility, the totality of his musical experience, to bear on his jazz writing and playing.

This is what Ellis has done here, and he brings to his jazz work a thorough understanding and appreciation of contemporary "serious" music concepts and practices, precepts that have been unselfconsciously, inevitably, and totally assimilated into his playing and writing approaches, so much so that they have become his natural mode of expression. "Natural" is the crucial word here, for were these classical influences merely grafted on, his music would ring false and pretentious. Such is not the case. Ellis works from within them. They are integral components of his fully shaped approach.

On first listening, the music in this collection might appear a bit forbidding or bewildering. After a few plays, however, it loses much of its strangeness, and one begins to absorb Ellis' rationale. The best piece with which to begin is Natural H., his fleet, coruscating reworking of Sweet Georgia Brown and the one piece in the album nearest to a conventional jazz performance, with its easily followed harmonic framework.

From this, one might proceed to the blues Uh-Huh and the sprightly trio piece Four and Three with its attractive alternation of 3/4 and 4/4 rhythms.

Imitation and Tragedy have as their basis the use of tone centers or clusters, and once the ear acclimates itself to their sound, the music is easily grasped and can be appreciated on its own terms. "It is interesting to notice", Ellis writes of the atonal Tragedy, "that after playing on these clusters for a while, they become 'tonal' to the ear, and you hear melodic ideas that can be either close to the sound of the cluster (sonorous) or further away from the sound (more dissonant), so it is actually exactly like improvising on slow moving chords".

The most interesting number in the collection — because of its daring and its success — is Despair, a piece of group improvisation that is based in John Cage's indeterminacy principles.

The selection is wholly extemporized by the quintet and had no guiding framework save an emotional one: the idea of progressing musically from despair to hope. It is largely successful in its evocation of this emotional progression and in its incorporation of certain natural sounds not normally accorded any musical value (for example, human sighs, splintering sounds, toy slide whistle) into the over-all structure of the piece.

This stimulating LP is one in which there are no loose ends, an album motivated by a strong, sure, and wholly unique conception. It has something to say and states it with force, directness, sensitivity, and conviction despite its variance with prevalent "trends" in jazz.

If Ellis' music requires a reorientation of the listener, it more than repays the effort with some of the most forthright, intense, and rewarding jazz listening in some time.

*Pete Welding (Down Beat, February 15, 1962 [5 stars])*

1 - Natural H.

2 - Despair To Hope

3 - Uh-Huh

4 - Four And Three

5 - Imitation

6 - Solo

7 - Cock And Bull

8 - Tragedy

(All compositions by Don Ellis)

Don Ellis (trumpet, piano [#8]), Al Francis (vibraphone),

Jaki Byard (piano), Ron Carter (bass), Charlie Persip (drums).

Recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, May 11, 1961