Napa Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival 2008

In a digital world, musical genres are invented and reinvented all the time, but not so long ago, musicians had to have more than just inspiration to forge ahead, but also the courage to follow their instincts.

Donald Johnson Ellis was one of first musicians and composers to explore the fusion between jazz, rock and classical music. In this feature-length documentary, the late jazz legend, Maynard Ferguson, explains how Ellis was never satisfied with a certain sound and always looked for new ways to move back and forth across the borders of traditional genres. Pulitzer-winning composer, Gunther Schuller, describes Ellis as the inspiration for his landmark phrase, “The Third Stream.”

Ellis became known for his odd-metered arrangements during his college years at the University of Boston. Schuller introduced Ellis to the Leornard Bernstein, Director of the New York Philharmonic and a national television audience viewed Ellis for the first time in 1960 on one of Bernstein's Young People's Concerts. Columbia Records signed Ellis for a long stint with Producer John Hammond and he won a Grammy Award in 1972 for Best Score for the Academy Award winner for Best Picture, The French Connection.

Diagnosed early on with an enlarged heart, Ellis realized that his career might be relatively short and devoted his life to pushing the boundaries of the music he loved. Considered one of the true purists of jazz, Ellis died of a heart attack in 1978 at age 44. Loking back, Don Ellis was one of those determined explorers who are always looking for the next peak to climb.

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