November 1, 2017

Raydar Ellis

!Bang

Emcee. Producer. Professor. DJ. Innovator.

Raydar Ellis is a “Jack of All Trades, master of many” in a musical landscape that embraces diversity. Whether he is producing for a label like Blue Note, spinning party-goers into a frenzy, influencing students as a professor at Berklee College of Music, or contributing as a key component to Revive Music Group, Ellis has made tremendous strides to cement his place as a major player on several fronts in the music scene.

A native of the Northeast area (specifically NJ, CT, & NYC), Raydar started out like a lot of people in Hip Hop did, messing around with his father’s stereo and record collection. That curiosity grew to Emceeing and production in high school, and continued into college where he became a DJ and released his debut album “Late Pass” on Brick Records/Traffic Entertainment. From there he branched off into a myriad of musical landscapes where each of his talents were put to the test.

Ellis has spent the better part of his career thus far as a sideman in the NYC jazz community, setting up his turntables alongside upright basses and horn sections and triggering samples and loops as a member of many live outfits. As a core member of the Revive Big Band (directed by Igmar Thomas), Raydar’s commitment to the principle instruments of Hip Hop (Turntables and Samplers) has helped shift the perception of what was possible with the devices and cemented credibility with institutions who otherwise wouldn’t know or care. Some of these musical excursions have found their way to prestigious venues like The Kennedy Center and The MoMA and to recordings like Esperanza Spalding’s “Radio Music Society”, and Revive Music/Blue Note’s “Supreme Sonacy Vol. 1”.

Adding even more heft to his already solid performance history, Ellis has shared the stage with internationally known artists including: Robert Glasper, Pharoahe Monch, Questlove, Bilal, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def), Lyric Jones, Meshell Ndegeocello, Marc Cary, Marcus Strickland, Ben Williams, Fred Wesley, Anna Wise/Sonnymoon, and J-Live.

When factoring in the schedule he keeps as an Emcee/Producer/DJ, it’s quite impressive that Ellis also invests a substantial amount of time into being an educator. As an Assistant Professor, he remains fully dedicated to the students he teaches at Berklee College of Music, commuting to Boston at the start of each week to teach classes rooted in Hip Hop like songwriting, beatmaking, and the first ever J Dilla Ensemble, a curriculum he was tapped to create and share. As described in a feature on Ellis from Complex.com, the course is “focused on live musicians re-interpreting and playing music from James Yancey’s extensive catalog.” In addition to his course load, Raydar has also been invited to The Grammy Museum & MIT as a guest lecturer, and to Harvard to write the essay on Production for their Hip Hop Archives series.