Gil Melle launched his artistic path as a post-bop baritone saxophonist who also painted and composed, only to expand later into numerous scientific and creative domains. Early in his trajectory he set jazz aside to focus instead on film and television scoring alongside electronic experimentation. His sound nevertheless blended jazz influences, especially from Duke Ellington, with classical elements he labeled "primitive modern." That hybrid approach appeared across a run of late-1950s albums issued by Blue Note and Prestige. Although subsequent releases arrived only intermittently, Melle maintained an extraordinarily active schedule that encompassed score composition, electronic-music innovation, construction of custom computers and synthesizers, painting, aviation, restoration of cars and aircraft, and curation of an antiquarian collection of microscopical instruments.
Born in New York City, he was raised from age two by a family friend following his parents' departure. During childhood he took up painting, earning several national competition prizes while still a preteen, and turned to the saxophone in his teens. Before turning sixteen he was already performing in multiple Greenwich Village jazz venues. At nineteen he became the first white musician signed to Blue Note, issuing five 10-inch discs before delivering his initial 12-inch LP, Patterns in Jazz, in 1956. Parallel to his jazz work he sustained his visual-art practice, mounting paintings and sculptures in New York galleries and supplying cover art for his own recordings as well as those by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and Thelonious Monk. After the Patterns in Jazz sessions he departed Blue Note for Prestige, where between 1956 and 1957 he completed three albums—Primitive Modern, Gil's Guests, and Quadrama—before stepping away from leading conventional jazz ensembles.
Relocating to Los Angeles in the 1960s, he began writing scores for film and television, ultimately producing music for more than 125 pictures across three decades. He simultaneously advanced electronic music by designing his own synthesizers, among them what is often cited as the first drum machine, and by appearing with the all-electronic jazz ensemble the Electronauts at the tenth Monterey Jazz Festival. His return to recording came in 1967 with the all-electronic jazz album Tome VI on Verve. He furthered electronic techniques by scoring Night Gallery and The Andromeda Strain entirely on synthesizers at a time when such methods were unprecedented. Beyond film work he created several symphonies that received performances by orchestras in Toronto, London, and New Zealand.
By the mid-1990s he chose to emphasize visual art, particularly computer-generated digital painting that drew widespread praise from critics nationwide. Gil Melle died of a heart attack at his Malibu, California residence on October 28, 2004.
