quartet arrangements of the music of Bizet's Carmen wasn't initially mine. I was invited to play with my quartet at the St Barts Music Festival in 2020, and the theme for the festival that year was Carmen. The festival directors requested selections from Carmen for our set, and so I took up the challenge of adapting the music for us to play. The first thing I did was reach out to my mentor from my days at The New School, Robert Sadin, and he guided me towards the most important themes to work on. My goal was to keep the songs mostly intact and recognizable, while also making them fun for us to play and improvise over. When we played the show, the audience, mostly french-speaking, went crazy. I was surprised at how well it went over, and it was clear from the response that we should record the music and try to get it out more widely into the world.
John Ellis is one of New York’s premiere tenor saxophone voices. With more than 150 album credits as a sideman, John has recorded with a wide variety of artists such as Charlie Hunter, Robert Glasper, Darcy James Argue, Helen Sung, Kendrick Scott Oracle, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Sting. John was the 2nd place winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Saxophone Competition in 2002, he was the recipient of three composition grants through The
Jazz Gallery for the creation of new work (“Dreamscapes”, “The Ice Siren”, and “MOBRO”) and he was selected as the 2014 Make
Jazz Fellow by the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. John has released fourteen albums as a leader, three of those featuring his New Orleans-centered band Double-Wide, which has toured extensively and was featured on the Main Stage of the 2012 Newport
Jazz Festival. He co-produced the music for the children’s book series “Baby Loves
Jazz” with Aaron Goldberg, and he wrote the theme music for the NPR podcast, “Rough Translation.” His latest album, “Bizet: Carmen in
Jazz”, was released on Blue Room Music in December of 2023 and features Reuben Rogers, Gary Versace, and Jason Marsalis.