Kurt Elling in Jazzwise Magazine

Sunday March 20, 2011

From Jazzwise Magazine

Come Running to Me

By Peter Quinn
March 2011

It’s one of the great what-ifs of jazz. Imagine, for a second, that in 1992 Kurt Elling hadn’t ended up a language credit shy of gaining a Masters in Philosophy of Religion from the University of Chicago. The picture might have looked something like this (cue ripple dissolve): a book-lined study, an anglepoise lamp sitting on top of a sturdy mahogany desk, and Professor Kurt Elling’s tutorial on ‘Spinoza and the Question of Being’ is in full swing. Happily, for us, fate decreed that Elling’s path did not lead down the road to academe. Instead, he’s The Greatest Living Male Jazz Vocalist. Funny how things work out.

And yet, interviewing Elling in a central London hotel, there is something of the academic about him. Perhaps it’s the way the singer — dressed in jeans, smart shirt and sporting a chunky, rather rakish-looking silver bracelet — carefully weighs each question before offering an always considered and eloquently expressed response. As Don Was, the producer on Elling’s new release The Gate, tells me: “At any given time for this guy, he’s the most intelligent cat in the room.” But don’t take Don’s word for it, just listen to the work: lyrics adapted from Rilke, quotes from Proust, ‘My Foolish Heart’ interpolated with St. John of the Cross. And who else would think to marry a little-known Duke Ellington piece with the words of a thirteenth century Sufi mystic? Check out ‘I Like The Sunrise’ on Nightmoves and hear why Kurt Elling is, to use his own parlance, a heavy cat.

I’m guessing there are no regrets about the academic career?

“No, not really,” Elling says. “I was trying to think as clearly as I could about what was right for my life and for my vocation. I learned how to think about certain things and came to an understanding. But no regrets that I’m a jazz singer and not a university professor. I don’t really think the way that professional academics in that part of the world think. And I don’t really have a desire to think that way. I thought I did. I thought that was the direction I was being enticed to go, or pushed to go. But that wasn’t the case.” A moment’s pause for thought. “I’d like to have the health care!”

In his autobiography Treat It Gentle, Sidney Bechet states: “That’s what the music is … a lost thing finding itself”. I wonder if Elling’s earliest encounter with jazz elicited a similar act of recognition.

“I liked the sound and identified with it long before I thought I was going to be a professional at it. Long before. And I definitely paid attention to it in very serious ways without thinking, Oh, let me be a part of this. It just didn’t even occur to me that that was really going to be possible, for the longest time. Part of the reason why it worked out for me was that older musicians repeatedly encouraged me, and put their arm around me and said, ‘Hey, you’re with us’. Even though what I was doing was rudimentary, and I think they acknowledged that plenty of times, they wanted to see it go. Cats hear an awful lot of singers. I think a lot of times singers play at jazz, just because they can memorize the lyrics to a standard, but they don’t really have a concept of what jazz people actually do. So l would come on and I would take chances and I would try to find a new way through a song and try to swing — so they dug that.”

Read the full article here