This is Ellis’ debut album under his own name, having achieved modest recognition as an instrumentalist and composer at the experimental edge of jazz with George Russell and Charles Mingus, called at the time ‘new wave’ to differentiate it from the free jazz precepts advanced by Ornette Coleman.

Here, Ellis is experimenting with pre-existing musical devices applied within a jazz context. The central exhibit of How Time Passes is ‘Improvisational Suite No. 1’, which explores the practical aspects of both writing and improvising on tone rows. From a jazz perspective, 12 tone/serial techniques are by definition limiting, but Ellis approached the tone row, and the order in which it was written freely, slipping between tonality and atonality while moving in an out of tempo.

The title track is concerned with accelerando and retard of tempo during the improvisation process – the melodic line expressed briskly, the improvisation slowing to around half tempo, with the composition ultimately speeding up to the original tempo. ‘Sallie’ is a modal ballad, ‘Simplex One’, a contraction of simple and complex, presents a simple melody over complex harmonies, while ‘Waste’ allows the improviser to spontaneously choose whatever tempo he wishes for each chorus, which is one way, I suppose, of keeping the rhythm section on their toes. Well executed, and critically well received he was soon in the studio with the same band to record How Time Passes, both a notable beginning to a remarkable odyssey in jazz.