Huffington Post's Conversation with Kurt Elling

Friday October 05, 2012

From The Huffington Post

A Conversation with Kurt Elling
By: Mike Ragogna

Mike Ragogna: Mister Kurt Elling, thank you for this interview for Huffington Post and those who’ll be listening at Solar-Powered KRUU-FM.

Kurt Elling: Everything is groovy when it’s solar-powered, man!

MR: [laughs] That’s almost like a station ID, thank you.

KE: You’ve got it.

MR: Okay, let’s look at this list of songs from your new album, 1619 Broadway – The Brill Building Project. You start off with “On Broadway,” written by got Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It’s one of the most famous hits of all time, and when you think of The Brill Building and all the talent at that address, God. Kurt, you expanded the concept of The Brill Building to the generations of writers that have come out of there, not just staying with the most sixties-ish hits and writers.

KE: Well, I didn’t want to be didactic. I did and do want to celebrate classic Brill-era compositions. You mentioned a number of the songwriting teams there in your intro, but that era also means people like Burt Bacharach and Hal David, it means Neil Diamond, it means Gerry Goffin and Carole King, it means Doc Pomus, but I didn’t want to be didactic in my treatment. I did want to, as you rightly note, lift up the larger history of The Brill. The Brill Building’s been in existence since the early 1930s, and composers and songwriters have been working out of that building, publishers, people making demos… A lot of great performers had offices in there. They’ve been operating since the 1930s, and even to this day, the place is chock-a-block with media types and with studios that produce rap artists; Paul Simon still has his offices. So I really did want to cast as broad a net as I could, not only as a quasi-historical examination, but also because it allowed me to be led a little bit more by my own creative intuition and less by some kind of school report technique.

MR: When you look at this list of people who have come out of The Brill Building it’s overwhelming. You also want to throw out names that don’t necessarily fit into The Brill Building lexicon, like Duke Ellington and Jimmy Hamilton, Al Dubin and Harry Warren.

KE: Exactly! Johnny Mercer had his offices in there, and not only that, but Nat Cole had his management offices in The Brill Building for quite some time, and there was actually a jazz club there for about four and a half years. It’s a music building. For me, as a jazz artist, jazz is, in part, defined by its ability to take into itself and transform any other kind of music that it desires, that it finds interesting, and make it into jazz material. That’s a habit that’s as old as jazz itself, people taking “How High The Moon” and writing their own Bird-inspired licks over it. That’s as old as jazz itself. So, for me, it’s just another step in the process and I hope and believe that I’ve been true to the integrity of my musical vision and that I’ve brought something lovely into the world.

To read more click here

On Broadway	1:30	Kurt Elling
You Send Me	1:30	Kurt Elling
American Tune	1:30	Kurt Elling

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