Tuesday June 11, 2019
From La Presse
Kurt Elling and Danilo Perez: open canvas
By: ALAIN BRUNET
“Neither, force was to observe. “We’re experimenting,” summed Kurt Elling, smiling, sometimes speaking in French to the public.
In ivories, Danilo Perez’s melodic-harmonic improvisations triggered Kurt Elling’s vocal melodies, with or without words.
In the context of this visibly exploratory program, Kurt Elling’s original songs have been recognized, an evocation of the great songwriter Silvio Rodriguez (to denounce the American government’s retrograde stance towards Cuba), poetic narratives declaimed by singer on piano background, jazz standards performed in tandem, Broadway borrowing, a passage inspired by Thelonious Monk and concluded on a text grafted to the superb ballad Pannonica, a Latin jazz with vocal pecsussion leading to Overjoyed of Stevie Wonder, and so on.”