Quotes By Don Ellis
To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel - not the way others think you should feel.
Don Ellis
I expect the audience to come up to my level. I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.
Don Ellis
On those long notes behind the trumpet solo, if anyone lets his mind wander for a minute he is dead.
Don Ellis
If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world.
Don Ellis