In 1964, Ellis began graduate studies in ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied with Indian musician Harihar Rao. Greatly inspired by Rao, Ellis sought to implement odd meters in a Western improvised context and (with Rao) co-authored the 1965 article "An Introduction to Indian Music for the Jazz Musician". Ellis briefly formed the first version of his big band at this time but disbanded it when he received a Rockefeller Foundation-funded Creative Associate fellowship at the University at Buffalo's contemporary classical music-oriented Center of the Creative and Performing Arts for the 1964-1965 academic year. During his time in Buffalo, Ellis performed jazz, serialist and aleatoric pieces and other forms of composition with such figures as Lukas Foss, George Crumb and Paul Zukofsky.