Lisle Ellis, born Lyle Steve Lansall on November 17, 1951, in Campbell River, British Columbia, is a Canadian jazz bassist and composer. He began playing electric bass in his teens, performing in radio and television shows. Ellis studied at the Vancouver Academy of Music and Douglas College before attending the Creative Music Studio in New York from 1975 to 1979. He lived in Toronto and Montreal, where he received the inaugural Fred Stone Award in 1986. Ellis co-founded the New Orchestra Workshop collective in Vancouver. In 1989, his album Kaleidoscopes: The Ornette Coleman Songbook received five stars in Down Beat. After moving to the United States in 1992, he worked with Glenn Spearman in San Francisco and joined the Cecil Taylor band in 1994. He moved to San Diego in 2001 and New York City in 2005, developing an electro-acoustic interface called “bass & circuitry”. His recordings include Elevations (1995), What We Live Fo(u)r (1996), and Sucker Punch Requiem (2008).
