| Merrill Leroy Ellis | |
| Birth Date: | 9 December 1916 |
| Birth Place: | Cleburne, Texas, US |
| Death Place: | Denton, TX |
| Alma Mater: | University of Oklahoma |
| Occupation: | composer and academic |
| Employer: | University of North Texas College of Music |
Merrill Leroy Ellis (9 December 1916 Cleburne, Texas – 12 July 1981 Denton, Texas) was an American composer, performer, and experimental music researcher. He is most known for his work with electronic (analog) and intermedia compositions, new compositional techniques, development of new instruments, and exploration of new notation techniques for scoring and performance.
Ellis studied privately with Roy Harris, Spencer Norton (1909–1978), and Charles Garland (University of Missouri) and Darius Milhaud (1957)
Ellis was married to Willa Naomi Ellis (née Wiggins), who held a BFA in Music Education and taught piano from their home. Together they raised five children, teaching each one to play two instruments.
In 1974 Ellis travelled by train across the southwest from Texas to California with his wife, children and grandchildren while filming footage for his intermedia composition "Trains - Used to Run Late."
Merrill Ellis taught band, orchestra, music theory, and composition in Texas and Missouri at the high school (Hickman High School and Lefors Independent School District), junior college (Joplin Junior College (now Missouri Southern State University and Moberly Junior College)and college level (Christian College now Columbia College (Missouri) from 1943 until 1962.
In in 1962, Ellis founded the electronic music program at the University of North Texas College of Music shortly after he began teaching there. North Texas acquired its first Moog Machine for use in Merrill Ellis' studio, late 1965. Ellis was a pioneer in composing and performing live multimedia music on Moogs from the mid to late 1960s. He worked with Robert Moog to design the second Moog synthesizer ever made to be portable for him and his doctoral students to use during performances. Robert Moog gave a nod to Ellis by naming this second model the E-II. It was Moog's second synthesizer and Ellis' second Moog. In March 1970, a Tucson newspaper (Tucson Daily Citizen) mentioned that he had brought a Moog (smaller than the North Texas studio model) for a live performance of "Kaleidoscope."
The electronic music center at North Texas was one of the few in the southwest in the early 1960s. According to Ellis in a 1970 interview, Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (in New York City) was the largest and oldest. Yale University, University of Toronto, and University of Illinois had prolific computer music labs, too.
The Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia[1] (CEMI) at North Texas is an outgrowth of his accomplishments. When the College of Music designed and erected a new music complex in the late 1970s, a "new music" theater was designed and named "The Merrill Ellis Intermedia Theater" or "MEIT."
for 2 trumpets, horn, bass trombone and tuba
Premiered Nov 6, 1973, Montevallo University, Alabama; Marsue Burns, PhD (1935–2007), libretto; Carroll Young Rich, PhD (1933–), Anglo-Saxon translation for the spoken parts (Marsue and Carroll were members of the UNT English faculty)
Ellis became a member of ASCAP in 1966.
Merrill Ellis, "Kaleidoscope," for Orchestra, Synthesizer, and Soprano – Joan Wall, soprano
George Crumb, Echos of Time and the River †
originally released 1974 (LP), Louisville Orchestra First Edition Recordings LS711;,
Crystal Records (2004);
Natalia Bolshakova (piano)
Crystal Records CD764 (Dec 1, 2004);
Track 10 - Ellis: Trumpet Piece
† Crumb, who shares the album with Ellis, won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize in Music for this composition