OK, so let's unpack this. We live in a world
that is just absolutely obsessed with categorization.
Oh, completely. I mean, it's the way our brains
are wired, right? Right. We want to know, is
this person an athlete or are they an artist?
Right. Is this band indie rock or they're pop?
Are you the guy in the dive bar with the sticky
floor? Yeah. Or are you the guy in the tuxedo
at the symphony hall? We love our little boxes.
Well. It is human nature. I mean, we categorize
to understand things. It's a survival mechanism,
really. If we can label something, we feel like
we can predict it. Exactly. But the problem with
those boxes is that they are inherently limiting.
And usually the most interesting things, the
things that actually change culture, they happen
right on the jagged edges where those boxes start
to tear apart. The friction point. Exactly. And
today we are taking a deep dive into the story
of someone who doesn't just, you know, tear the
cardboard, he essentially takes the boxes, sets
them on fire, and then conducts a full orchestra
while they burn. That is a great way to put it.
We are talking about Ellis Ludwig Leone. A truly
fascinating subject. Because if you look at the
contemporary soundscape, let's say the last 10
to 15 years of music coming out of New York,
Ellis Ludwig Leone occupies a very specific,
almost impossible coordinate. He really does.
I mean, most people, if they know the name at
all, they know him as the brain behind the band
San Fermin. Yes. And if you've heard them, you
know it's not your typical four dudes in a garage
situation. Not at all. It's big. It's brassy.
It's complicated. It feels huge. But here's where
it gets really interesting for this deep dive.
That band is just the tip of the iceberg. It
really is. It might even be a red herring. Precisely.
Because if we limit our view of him to just,
you know, indie pop bandleader, we miss the much
larger, much stranger picture entirely. Right.
This is a composer who treats a pop band like
a symphony orchestra. And conversely, he treats
a symphony orchestra like a storytelling device.
He is applying the rigor of classical composition
to the chaotic energy of a rock club. Which is
wild. So our mission today, our goal for this
deep dive is to figure out how a kid from rural
Massachusetts went from playing competitive basketball.
Which we definitely need to talk about. Oh, absolutely.
I want to put a huge pin in the basketball thing
because it's actually so important. But how he
goes from that to writing ballets for the New
York City Ballet and leading one of the most
ambitious touring acts in indie music. It is
a journey into the architecture of sound. The
architecture of sound? I love that. That is the
theme I really want you to keep in mind today
as we go through this. Whether he is writing
for a sweaty rock venue or Lincoln Center, Ludwig
Leone is building structures. He is an architect
first and a musician second. OK, so let's look
at the blueprints. We have a massive stack of
sources here for this deep dive. We do. We've
got biographical data, career history, extensive
lists of compositions, discographies, interviews,
you name it. And honestly, just scanning the
list of his works is a little dizzying. It is
a lot to take in. You have a track listing for
a pop album sitting right next to a commission
for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. It literally
looks like a clerical error. Which speaks perfectly
to that refusal to be categorized that we mentioned
earlier. But to understand how he got there,
we have to go back to the beginning. The foundation.
Exactly. We need to look at the foundation. Because
you don't just wake up one day and decide to
write a ballet and a rock album in the exact
same week. Right. That duality has to be baked
in from the start. Let's do it. Origin story
time. So Ellis Ledwig Leone, born in 1989 in
Rhode Island, but he grew up in Berkeley, Massachusetts.
Now I look this up. Berkeley, Massachusetts is
very much not Berkeley, California. No, it is
decidedly not. Right. It is a rural community
on the South Coast. It's quiet. It's isolated.
It's the kind of place we have a lot of space
to think, but also the kind of place where you
might get incredibly bored if you don't have
an active imagination. Right. But his house,
probably not so quiet. Or at least visually loud,
if that makes sense. Because his parents were
both painters and former visual arts professors.
And this is a really crucial detail. Yeah. We
so often talk about musical families, where the
dad played jazz or the mom was an opera singer.
But growing up in a visual arts household, is
fundamentally different. How so? Well, imagine
growing up in an environment where the primary
language isn't just English, it's color, it's
texture, it's balance and composition. When you
are raised by visual artists, you learn to see
the world differently from day one. You learn
about foreground and background. I was actually
thinking about that when I was going through
the sources. Do you think he sees music? Like
when he's writing a song, is he thinking in terms
of painting? It is highly probable. I mean, there
is a clinical concept called synesthesia where
senses actually overlap. Right. Where you hear
a C major chord and see the color yellow. Exactly.
But even without that specific clinical diagnosis,
the vocabulary of visual art is definitely there
in his work. When you listen to his arrangements,
especially in Sanfermin or his orchestral work,
he doesn't just write a simple melody and slack
some chords under it. No, definitely not. He
layers. He creates immense density. He uses instruments,
almost like a painter uses a palette knife. Oh,
that's interesting. He's adding a sharp splash
of brass here to brighten the image or a wide
wash of strings over there to create depth. It's
very, very textural. It's not linear. It's spatial.
Exactly. He is quite literally filling a canvas.
So he's painting with sound. That makes perfect
sense given the background. But here's the curve
ball. And this is the part I really wanted to
dig into earlier. He wasn't just the artsy kid
sitting in the corner sketching in a notebook
while everyone else was outside. No, he was not.
He played competitive basketball, which is a
detail I absolutely love because it completely
shatters the stereotype of the fragile, brooding
indoor composer. Right. I mean, I'm picturing
this guy practicing these intricate scales on
the piano for three hours and then lacing up
his sneakers and running suicide drills on the
court. It feels like two completely different
people inhabiting the same body. It seems contradictory
on On the surface, yes. But I want to challenge
that assumption. Because if you really think
about it, there is a very strong parallel between
the two. Really? Between piano and basketball?
Absolutely. Both require intense, repetitive,
almost grueling discipline. You don't get good
at classical piano by just feeling the music.
And you don't get good at basketball by just
showing up to the game. Yeah, that's true. It's
trill work. It's repetition. It's building muscle
memory until the action becomes instinct. The
grind is exactly the same. But I want to pause
on this basketball detail for another second
because I think it's more than just a fun fact
about his work ethic. We have a note here from
one of the interviews in our sources where Ludwig
Leoni talks specifically about the role of the
point guard. Right. And this is where the psychology
of the composer really starts to reveal itself.
If you think about the point guard in basketball,
they aren't just out there scoring points. No,
they're running the play. They are the floor
general. They have to see the spatial geometry
of 10 massive people moving around the court
in real time. They have to know where everyone
is supposed to be before they even get there.
Which is exactly what a conductor does. Exactly.
A conductor or a composer writing for eight distinct
instruments is managing traffic. They are anticipating
the crash before it happens. They are controlling
the flow of time and energy. Ludwig Leone has
this great quote where he compares the flow state
of a fast break in basketball to the flow state
of navigating a really complex polyrhythm in
music. completely strips the elitism out of the
classical side of things. It really does. It
turns the orchestra into a team sport. It makes
the conductor the point guard. And I think it
explains the aggression in some of his music,
too. The aggression. Yes. We tend to think of
the genre chamber pop as delicate, you know,
tea and doilies, polite little string sections.
Yeah. But if you listen to a track like Jackrabbit,
which we will definitely discuss later. We are
absolutely talking about Jackrabbit. That track
isn't delicate. It's athletic. It's muscular.
It practically sweats. It's a contact sport.
The brass section isn't asking for permission.
It's driving the lane hard. Exactly. There is
a real physicality to his music. It drives. It
has momentum It's not passive background music
and don't forget while he was doing the classical
piano thing and the competitive basketball thing
He was also doing the very normal teenager thing
which is playing in a string of high school rock
bands Oh, right the classic garage band phase
the loud messy. Let's completely annoy the neighbors
phase exactly But notice the duality starting
even back then in high school by day He's studying
the intricate mathematical structure of classical
piano. Bach, Beethoven, the strict rules of harmony.
But by night, he's probably banging out power
chords in a rock band, where the only real rule
is, be as loud as possible. It's two different
worlds. And most kids eventually choose one lane.
They either get serious, go to the conservatory
and drop the rock stuff, or they buy a van and
abandon the classical training. He didn't choose.
He just kept widening the highway so he could
drive in both lanes at the exact same time. And
speaking of that highway, we have to talk about
a really critical pit stop. So he's 15 years
old. He goes to a summer program at the Berklee
College of Music in Boston. And he meets a guy
named Alan Tate. This is what I would call a
true catalyst moment in his life. Without this
specific meeting, The rest of the story we're
talking about today probably doesn't happen.
Alan Tate, if you know Sanfermin at all, you
know that voice. Oh, you can't miss it. It's
this deep, incredible baritone. It sounds like
it's coming from the bottom of a very dark well.
And they met when they were 15. 15 years old.
Yeah. And consider the odds of that for a second.
You meet someone at a summer camp as a teenager,
and that person ends up becoming your primary
creative partner for the next two decades. It
never happens. Usually summer camp friends drift
apart after a few months of texting. It's wild.
It's like meeting your Lenin or McCartney in
sophomore homeroom. But let's talk about that
voice for a second because it's not just a cool
voice. Why was Tate's specific vocal register
so important for what Ellis wanted to build musically?
Let's go back to the architecture metaphor again.
Okay. If you are building a massive musical structure,
with violins, trumpets, synthesizers, and female
vocals, all of which are usually operating in
a much higher sonic register, you need a foundation.
You need a floor. You need something to anchor
the whole thing to the earth. Alan Tate's voice
is that anchor. It is steady. It's low, and it's
incredibly resonant. It allows Ellis to build
all these frantic, high -energy, high -pitch
arrangements on top of it without the song just
floating away into the stratosphere. So Tate
literally provides the gravity for the music.
Exactly. And it highlights the importance of
those early networks. But I think it also tells
us something profound about Lev Clione's loyalty
and his artistic vision. He recognized something
essential in Tate's voice, even when they were
kids. Or perhaps they just clicked personally.
But either way, he held onto that connection.
Tate became the definitive voice of San Fermin.
So let's recap where he's at. He's got the visual
art background from his parents, the athletic
discipline from basketball, the rock band experience,
the classical piano chops, and now he's got his
lead singer on speed dial. Right. But he doesn't
just start the band and hit the road immediately.
He goes to Yale. And this is where the classical
composer identity really solidifies for him.
He attends Yale University and graduates in 2011
with a degree in classical composition. Which
is serious stuff. Yale isn't exactly a garage
band rehearsal space that's heavy academic rigor
that is learning every single rule before you're
allowed to break them. It is very traditional
in many ways. Yeah. But what stands out in the
source material we reviewed is that he wasn't
just sitting quietly in a lecture hall analyzing
Mozart scores. He was busy. He was incredibly
active. He began writing music for his own bands
and various ensembles while he was still studying.
He was taking the theoretical concepts from the
classroom and testing them in real time. He didn't
wait for the fancy diploma to start doing the
actual work. Not at all. And that immense drive
led to another massive trajectory altering connection.
While he was still a junior at Yale, he started
working as an assistant for the composer, Nico
Moly. Okay, for those listening who might not
know, can you give us the deep dive on Nico Mulli?
Gladly. Because why is that name drop so important?
To the average person, that name might not mean
much, but in this specific musical world, it's
a huge deal. Nico Mulli is an absolute giant
in the contemporary classical world, but more
importantly for our story, he is essentially
the prototype for the modern genre -less composer.
The guy who breaks the boxes. Exactly. He is
known for exactly the kind of thing Ludwig Lyon
eventually does, blurring the lines completely.
Moody has written grand operas for the Metropolitan
Opera, but he's also worked intimately with massive
indie bands like Grizzly Bear, The National,
and Björk. He exists in both of those worlds
completely comfortably. So getting to assist
a guy like that, that's not just an internship,
that's a master class in how to build a career.
It is an apprenticeship in the truest, oldest
sense of the word. But let's look at the timeline
here, and what the Nico Mulli connection implies
about the New York music ecosystem. Okay. It's
not just that he got a good job. It's about who
holds the keys to the city, right? It's about
access. Precisely. Mulli is essentially the central
hub of a very specific, very influential wheel
in Manhattan. To sit in that room, to see exactly
how Mulli works day to day, it teaches you the
kitchen sink aesthetic. What do you mean by that?
If you look at Mully's work, how he effortlessly
integrates electronic beats with the Renaissance
lute or a traditional choir with a synthesizer
drone, you see the exact blueprint for what Ellis
would later do with Sam Fairman. Ah, I see. He
learned by watching Mully that there are absolutely
no illegal combinations of instruments. So it's
permission. Working for Mully gave him the permission
to be weird, to try things that shouldn't work.
Yes. And on a purely practical level, it bridges
the gap between being a Yale student who writes
academic papers about music and being a working
artist who actually survives in the cutthroat
ecosystem of New York City. Right, because you
have to pay rent. Exactly. It established a lasting
professional relationship, but more importantly,
it likely showed Ludwig Lyon that a career straddling
these two seemingly opposed worlds was actually
financially and logistically possible. He saw
someone doing it successful. Okay, so he graduates
Yale in 2011. He's got the Ivy League degree.
He's got the master apprentice mentorship with
Nico Mouli. Now comes the turning point, the
real origin of the sound, the cabin in the woods
moment. Yes, the Banff residency. Yes, so he
takes an artistic residency. at the Banff Center
for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada. Now,
I looked this place up while prepping for this.
It's stunning. It is gorgeous, but it is secluded.
I mean, it's away from the noise of New York,
away from the academic pressure of Yale. It's
basically just giant mountains and a lot of snow.
And we really need applause on this, because
on paper, an artist residency... Sounds like
a luxury vacation. Right. It sounds amazing.
You go to Canada, you look at some beautiful
mountains, you write some nice songs. Sounds
incredibly relaxing, right? Sign me up tomorrow.
But it is definitely not a vacation. Have you
ever actually tried to be creative when you have
absolute zero distractions? Oh, it's brutal.
When there is no internet, no phone ringing?
no friends to meet for coffee down the street.
It's actually terrifying. It's the classic blank
page problem, but the blank page is your entire
life for six straight weeks. Exactly. Isolation
can be a powerful tool for a composer, but it
is a crucible. When you strip away all the daily
inputs, the traffic noise, the phone calls, the
social obligations, you are left with just your
own internal noise, and you have to sort through
it. And I read in the background notes from the
sources that he spent weeks up there, essentially
entirely alone in a small hut. No cell service,
just him and a keyboard. And that kind of silence
is deafeningly loud. This is the crucial moment
for the Sansherman album. Up until this exact
point, Ellis is a student. He's constantly surrounded
by professors, by Nico Mulli, by the bustle of
Yale in New York. Suddenly... He's in the middle
of the Canadian wilderness, and he has to ask
himself the scariest question an artist can ask.
What do I actually sound like? When no one else
is in the room? Exactly. And the sound he found
up there wasn't quiet. That's the grand irony
of this whole thing. He's in this silent, pristine,
snowy landscape, and he writes an album that
is explosive. It's chaotic, it's dense, and it's
full of dozens of voices. I think that is the
key psychological insight here. He was writing
the company he wished he had. Oh, wow. He was
populating that lonely cabin with imaginary friends
here at the baritone, the soprano, the sweeping
brass section. He literally built a massive party
in the middle of nowhere specifically because
he was lonely. That is such a cool way to look
at it. The album is a direct reaction to the
silence. It's him fighting back against the isolation.
And this is a very crucial distinction for you
listening to understand. He didn't get a bunch
of guys together in a damp rehearsal room in
Brooklyn and jam for hours until they found a
cool song. Which is how 99 % of bands start.
Exactly. He went to a secluded place and he wrote
the entire album. He composed it on paper. Like
a symphony. That's a huge difference in methodology.
It is a defining difference between a traditional
rock band and a project led by a classical composer.
He wrote the score first, and then, once the
music fully existed on the page or in his early
demos, he had to go out into the real world and
find the specific people capable of executing
it. Which brings us to 2013. The self -titled
album San for Men is officially released on downtown
records, and people absolutely loved it. Critical
acclaim is the phrase heavily used across our
sources. It really resonated. It hit a nerve
in the indie music scene. But because he wrote
it first and because it was this massive, complex,
orchestral pop sound with all these imaginary
friends, he couldn't just hire a drummer and
a bass player and go play a club. No. He had
inadvertently created a logistical monster. The
music completely demanded more. This prompted
the formation of an eight -person touring band.
Eight people. In a van. Let's just talk about
the grim economic reality of that for a second.
It is an absolute economic nightmare. Most indie
bands are a duo or a trio for a very specific
reason. Math. Yeah. Fewer mouths to feed at the
diner, fewer hotel rooms to book, everyone fits
in one vehicle. Precisely. To tour with eight
people plus all their instruments plus the sound
gear means you are splitting every single guarantee
check from a venue eight ways. which leaves basically
nothing. You need two vans or a very expensive
bus. The profit margins are razor thin, if they
exist at all. Artistically, however, it was a
strict necessity. He couldn't compromise. Right.
If you want those sweeping brass textures, the
intricate female and male vocal interplay, the
live violin, the complex percussion, you need
actual physical bodies on stage making those
sounds. It speaks directly to his composer -first
mentality. He simply wasn't willing to compromise
the architecture of the sound just to make curing
cheaper or easier. He essentially prioritized
the integrity of the composition over the profitability
of the tour. That is an incredibly rare move
in today's music industry. So let's look at what
that sound actually is. We've got four main studio
albums listed here in the sources. The self -titled
debut in 2013, Jack Rabbit in 2015, Belong in
2017, and the cormorant parts I & II in 2020.
And notice the progression and the constant control
there. He is the sole songwriter and producer
for all of them. The genre label gets thrown
around a lot in the press clippings we have here,
chamber pop, indie pop. But let's really unpack
chamber pop because it sounds like something
you'd listen to while drinking chamomile tea
with your pinky out. But Sanford and Rock's pretty
hard life. It is a fusion term, certainly. Yeah.
But we keep throwing it around. So I want to
really take that apart for the listener because
usually. When you mix an orchestra with a rock
band, it sounds like a cheap gimmick. Yeah, like
when a legacy metal band plays with a local symphony.
Exactly. It just sounds like two entirely separate
things glued together. The oil and water problem.
Right. The violin sounds like it's just awkwardly
floating on top of the drums, not actually part
of the groove. Precisely. But Ludwig Lyon does
something fundamentally different with his arrangements.
He treats the human voice as an instrument, and
he treats the physical instruments as voices.
In the source material, specifically in the liner
notes for the album Belong, he talks extensively
about interlocking textures. Help me visualize
that. What does interlocking mean in this context?
Okay, imagine a standard rock song. Usually the
electric guitar strums a big distorted chord,
and that sound fills up all the sonic space in
the middle. It's a wall of sound. Sure. In Ellis's
writing, that one guitar part might be completely
split up. The cello takes the low end of the
chord, the trumpet takes the middle stab, and
the violin takes the high fluttering notes. Oh,
wow. So the chord itself is actually three different
human beings standing 10 feet apart from each
other on the stage. Yes. It creates this incredible
3D audio effect, but it's also incredibly fragile.
If one person misses their cue by a fraction
of a second, the whole chord falls apart. That's
terrifying. That's the chamber element of chamber
pop. the absolute reliance on the entire ensemble
to create a single unified sound. It's high stakes
musical Jenga. That makes the live show sound
incredible to watch. You're literally watching
them construct the music in real time piece by
piece. Exactly. If we look at the trajectory
of the four albums, you can really see the evolution
of this interlocking concept. San Furman, the
debut, is the grand thesis statement. Right.
It's operatic. It's introducing all the characters.
It's very theatrical. Then comes Jack Rabbit
in 2015. We mentioned this one earlier. Jack
Rabbit is the panic attack. It really is. It's
faster. It's much more aggressive. The athleticism
we talked about with the basketball analogy is
all over this record. The themes are about running
away, hiding, being hunted. Then belong in 2017.
That one feels like the identity crisis. It's
a bit more song focused, a bit more vulnerable.
It's asking, where do I actually fit in all this?
And finally, The Cormorant in 2020. This is a
massive double album. It feels like walking through
a memory palace. It's ghostly, very atmospheric.
It circles back to some of the sweeping themes
from the first record, but with a lot more maturity.
It's less about the initial bang and much more
about the lingering haunt. It's a hell of a run
of records. And throughout all of this, the collaboration
is the key. We mentioned Alan Tate from the summer
camp days, but in 2020 they actually took it
a step further. They founded a record label together
called Better Company. Yes, with Alan Tate and
their longtime manager Thomas Winkler. And this
is highly significant for his career arc. It
shows a definitive shift from just being the
working artist to becoming the industry creator.
Taking control of the business side of the art.
And better company. Even the name itself suggests
a curatorial approach. It suggests they want
to actively surround themselves with other artists
they respect. It's about creating a new, sustainable
ecosystem. Maybe one that treats independent
artists better than the traditional music industry
machinery does. So he's got the critically acclaimed,
successful touring band. He's got his own record
label. For most people, that's a full career.
That's a job well done, time to retire to the
beach situation. Absolutely. But for Ellis Lyde
McLeone, that's seemingly just his day job. This
is where we pivot to the other side of his brain.
The classical composer. The other lane on the
highway. Exactly. And I really want to emphasize
this for you listening. This isn't a side hustle,
right? This isn't some bored rock star releasing
a vanity project of synthesizer noodles because
he has too much free time in the studio This
is a robust highly respected, separate career,
running entirely parallel to the pop band. The
list of institutions he's written for is genuinely
intimidating. I mean, we're talking the New York
City Ballet, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra,
the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the Ataca Quartet.
These are absolute top tier cultural institutions.
They do not commission hobbyists. They commission
serious proven composers. Let's look at some
of these titles because I feel like titles in
classical music can be, well, let's be honest,
kind of boring. Very academic. Yeah, Symphony
No. 4 in G major. Total snooze. But Ellis, he's
giving us titles that sound like short stories
or cool indie films. They are incredibly evocative.
Take the piece he wrote for the Alabama Symphony
Orchestra back in 2015. How to fake your death.
Yes. How to fake your death. I mean, come on.
That's a movie I want to buy a ticket for right
now. For an orchestra piece, it immediately sets
a tone before a single note is played. It's noir.
It's mysterious. It's got a dark sense of humor.
And it suggests a specific narrative. He isn't
just exploring a musical key abstractly. He's
telling a distinct story. It subverts the rigid
expectation of the symphony hall. You walk in
expecting something formal and stuffy, and he
hands you a pulp crime novel. Oh, look at the
piece for the harpist, Lavinia Meijer. Shadowy
figures. Again, highly visual, very mysterious.
And then there's his chamber music, processional
for a doomed wedding. That is easily my favorite
title on this entire list. It's so inherently
dramatic, but processional for a doomed wedding.
It makes you wonder immediately, is the music
incredibly sad? Is it chaotic? Is it actually
funny? It suggests a complete subversion of tradition.
Because think about it. A wedding processional
is supposed to be joyous, orderly, hopeful. Right.
Walking down the aisle. By adding the word doomed
to the title, he twists the entire conceptual
framework. It connects right back to that chamber
pop idea, taking a very traditional established
form and injecting it with raw modern anxiety.
It's pure irony. It also shows he's not taking
himself entirely too seriously, or rather he's
taking the music very seriously, but he's allowing
the audience to have a fun entry point that isn't
just dry music theory. Yes. You don't need a
master's degree from Yale to understand the vibe
of a doomed wedding. Which is absolutely key
for accessibility. I also noticed some of the
choral works have really, really specific titles.
Lying in a Field, age 67, and Singing in a Chorus,
age 14. Those were commissioned for the Brooklyn
Youth Chorus. What stands out to you about those
specific titles? The pinpoint specificity of
the ages. Age 67. Age 14. It strongly suggests
a deep focus on time. On the process of aging.
On the unreliability of memory. It grounds the
somewhat abstract airy sound of a large choir
in a very specific grounded human experience.
It forces you to think about the long timeline
of a single life. It's cool because he's writing
these pieces for a youth chorus, literal kids,
but the title reference is being 67 years old.
There's a beautiful juxtaposition there between
the performers and the subject matter. and we
see that same avant -garde edge in other titles
too. Look at speech after the removal of the
larynx. That was written for the ataca quartet.
Whoa, that sounds intense. That sounds like body
horror. It is highly experimental. It pushes
boundaries. It suggests he's using string instruments
to explore the very limits of communication or
the physical loss of a voice. It shows he's not
afraid to make the audience feel deeply uncomfortable.
We also have to talk about the ballet connection
because that's a whole different world. He collaborates
frequently with a choreographer named Troy Schumacher.
Yes. On works like Common Ground for the New
York City Ballet and the Impulse Wants Company
for Ballet Collective. Writing for dance just
has to be fundamentally different than writing
for a rock band, right? It requires a completely
different rhythmic sensibility. When you write
a song for a rock band, you are usually locked
tightly into a groove. The drummer drives the
bus. It's usually 44 time. The goal is to keep
the audience's heads bobbing. Right, keep the
momentum forward. But when you write for ballet...
You have to actively visualize human bodies moving
through space. The music has to physically breathe
with the dancer's lungs. It has to have open
space for physical expression. Dancers count
music in a very specific, almost elastic way.
The fact that Ellis can toggle so easily between
the rigid metronomic drive of a pop song and
the fluid expanding dynamics of a ballet score
is a massive testament to his sheer versatility.
He's also done a lot of work specifically with
the harp. I'm seeing the name Lavinia Meijer
pop up a lot in these source lists. Sweet for
flute and harp, night loops. The harp is a fascinating
instrument for a composer like him. It's incredibly
resonant, it's highly textural, but it's also
surprisingly rhythmic. It fits his painting with
sound aesthetic absolutely perfectly. Yeah, it
can do a lot. It can be sharply percussive, almost
like an acoustic guitar, or it can be completely
fluid, like water washing over the track. And
he's not just composing his own stuff from scratch.
He's also highly sought after as an arranger.
He's doing work for other indie artists like
Wild Pink on their critically acclaimed album,
A Billion Little Lights, and for bands like Pure
Bathing Culture. That is the ultimate mark of
a musician's musician. When other established
artists who are incredibly talented in their
own right, when they need that extra layer of
texture, that harmonic complexity, that indescribable
magic sauce they call Ellis. He's the guy you
call when you want to make your standard indie
rock album sound like it was recorded live inside
a gothic cathedral. Or when you want to give
a simple song immense cinematic weight. He essentially
brings the gravity to their projects. So we've
established he's a sponge. He soaks up visual
art from his parents, athletics from the court,
classical training from Yale, rock music from
the garage. But who are the people he's actually
listening to? Who's on Ellis Ludwig Leone's personal
playlist? The list of influences provided in
our source material is. Well, it's eclectic,
to say the very least. It is a Venn diagram of
genres that really shouldn't touch. but he forcibly
overlaps them. Let's run through it. Sufjan Stevens
is first. That one makes perfect logical sense.
Sufjan is essentially the modern godfather of
this kind of orchestral indie movement. Yeah.
Massive arrangements, deeply emotional storytelling,
a banjo playing right next to an oboe. If you
like Sanfermin, you almost certainly have Sufjan's
Illinois or Age of Ads in your record collection.
The National is next on the list. Again, very
logical. The National... Especially the work
produced by the Dessner Brothers expertly bridges
that indie rock and modern classical divide.
Right. It's highly emotional. It's driving. And
it features those iconic baritone vocals from
Matt Berninger. You can draw a very direct straight
line from them to Sanferman. But then we get
to Miles Davis. And here's where it gets truly
fascinating. Because why Miles Davis? Yeah, Sanferman
does not sound anything like Kind of Blue. Not
superficially, no. But think about Miles Davis's
core approach to harmony. Think about his incredibly
deliberate use of empty space. Think about the
sheer complexity of his underlying chord structures.
And most importantly, think about reinvention.
Miles never stayed in one box for more than a
few years. Exactly. He went from cool jazz to
modal jazz to wild fusion to electric funk. He
essentially burned the boxes every time he got
comfortable. Ludwig Lyon likely admires that
fearless, restless approach to musical structure
and change, and the jazz concept that the silence
between the notes is just as important as the
notes themselves. That makes total sense. It's
about adopting the attitude of the music, not
just mimicking the sound. Okay, then we have
the heavy classical hitters, Charles Ives and
Benjamin Britten. Charles Ives is the great American
experimentalist. He famously layered entirely
different clashing songs on top of each other
to create this wild cacophony and invent new
textures. Like two marching bands crossing paths.
Precisely. He captured the messy, chaotic sound
of marching bands in town squares. Ludwig Lyon's
work often feels like a modern digital interpretation
of that layering pristine pop sounds with rigid
classical structures to see what sparks fly.
And Britten. Benjamin Britten was an absolute
master of vocal writing and 20th century opera.
He inherently knew how to write for the human
voice in a way that was instantly dramatic and
deeply theatrical. Given how intensely vocal
heavy San Fermin is, with the constant male and
female dynamic interplay, and considering Ellis's
choral works, Britten is a very clear direct
ancestor to his style. And finally on the list,
Paul Simon. The quintessential American songwriter.
Because you can have all the sweeping violins
and harps in the world, but if the core song,
the underlying melody, the actual lyric, if that
isn't solid, the whole grand structure falls
apart. Paul Simon is the absolute master of the
foundational craft of songwriting. So if you
put all these wildly different people in a blender
Sufjan's raw emotion, Miles Davis's structural
complexity, Ives's fearless experimentation,
Britain's vocal drama, and Paul Simon's tight
storytelling, you get Ellis Ludwig Lyon. He is
standing right in the center of that impossible
Venn diagram. He takes the clear storytelling
of Paul Simon, adds the dense texture of Britain,
and drives the whole thing forward with the nerveth
energy of the national. It's a pretty powerful
cocktail. It really is. Yeah. And I think it
perfectly explains why his career looks the chaotic,
beautiful way it does. He isn't trying to just
be one of those things. He is actively synthesizing
them all into something new. So as we wrap up
this deep dive, what does this all mean for us,
for you listening? I think Ellis Ludwig Leone
represents a very necessary modern archetype
of the composer. For a very long time, culture
told artists... to just pick a lane and stay
in it. You are high art, or you are low art.
Exactly. You are classical, or you are pop. You
play dive bars, or you play concert halls. He
just said, no thanks, I'll do both. Exactly.
He completely refuses to be siloed. He uses the
complex tools of the orchestra to tell accessible
pop stories. And he uses the raw energy of rock
to invigorate stale classical forms. He proves...
definitively, that you don't ever have to choose
between intellectual complexity and emotional
accessibility. That's really inspiring, honestly.
Whether you're a working musician or just someone
trying to figure out your own complicated career
path, you don't have to choose between the basketball
part of you and the piano part of you. You can
integrate them. Integration is absolutely the
key word. He integrates his influences, his rigorous
training, and his disparate interests into one
cohesive whole. I want to leave everyone listening
with a final thought to chew on. We talked about
that incredible title earlier, processional for
a doomed wedding. Yes. We live in an era heavily
dictated by algorithms, Spotify, Apple Music,
YouTube. They all want to predict exactly what
you like based on what you already clicked. They
want you to be predictable. They want to play
you the exact same song over and over again,
just slightly different. They want to put you
in a neat little genre box so they can sell targeted
ads to you. The algorithm absolutely hates ambiguity.
Exactly. But artists like Ellis Ludwig Leone,
they are the ambiguity. They are the glitch in
the system. They are the surprise. So my question
for you is this. In a world of sterile playlists
that categorize everything by incredibly narrow
genres, are artists like Ludwig Leone the only
ones truly keeping the surprise, the doomed romance,
if you will, of musical discovery alive? That
is a brilliant question and definitely one worth
pondering today. Go listen to How to Fake Your
Death and then immediately chase it with a loud
Sanfermin track. See if you can hear the hidden
connection. Thanks for taking this deep dive
with us. Until next time. See ya.