IMN : Updates for Kurt Elling

Kurt Elling ... and all that jazz

IMN

May 11th, 2013

from independent.ie
By Aedn Gormley

Kurt Elling … and all that jazz

Yes, jazz singer Kurt Elling is easy on the eye. But forget about all that for now, ladies… The American baritone with a four-octave range is one of the most innovative jazz singers to come along in years.

It’s hard to picture him as a young boy singing motets by JS Bach, but that’s where his love of singing started. His father was a church musician in the Lutheran tradition and Kurt sang sacred music in choirs throughout his childhood and played a range of musical instruments.

“I was given a feeling of what music can do for the human spirit, to move you to a different place, to lift you up, to help you feel better, to explore how pain feels in a dignified fashion and I feel very fortunate to have had those experiences very early on,” he says.

I spoke to Chicago-born Elling during a particularly busy touring schedule that stops off in Dublin this month. He is doing upwards of 200 gigs on the road this year. He laments the fact that he doesn’t get to spend more time in New York where he moved a few years ago with his wife and young daughter, but it’s clear to see that he also loves performing and tells me that he was built to sing.

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A masterclass in jazz singing from the inimitable Elling

IMN

April 18th, 2013

from theartsdesk.com

Kurt Elling, Ronnie Scott’s: A masterclass in jazz singing from the inimitable Elling

OK, so you’ve given your copies of Rod’s It Had To Be You and Robbie’s Swing When You’re Winning a few listens (released many, many years ago, the latter is still top of the iTunes jazz albums chart in a gazillion countries). You’ve memorised the words and now you quite fancy giving “Summertime” a bit of a go. A touch of rubato here, a judicious tweak of the melody line there and, hey, you’re singing jazz! Er, not quite.

As shown in last night’s masterclass by the inimitable Kurt Elling, “singing jazz” requires a number of things: the desiderata would include developing your own approach to improvisation; working on your technique, your harmonic understanding and your relationship with the pulse; immersing yourself in the greats of the genre. It requires all of these things and more.

Starting with one of his signature songs, “My Foolish Heart”, Elling showed us the boundless possibilities that exist when the full palette of the bona fide jazz singer is in play. Interpolating the Victor Young/Ned Washington standard with a sung poem (“The Moon Was Once a Moth”) by 8th century Sufi saint, Rabia of Basra, the central part of this triptych ended with a hypnotically repeating phrase (“and again”) that rose ever higher until it evaporated right at the top of Elling’s four-octave range, before we returned to the standard’s welcoming embrace. It was quite an opener. “Thank you, good night!”, Elling joked.

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Kurt Elling's "Mastery Went Way Beyond Charisma"

IMN

April 16th, 2013

From The Telegraph

Kurt Elling, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, review
5 out of 5 stars
By: Ivan Hewett

Within 10 seconds of Kurt Elling’s arrival on Ronnie Scott’s stage, negligently yet somehow expensively elegant, one knew the only thing to do was to yield. Seduction is all about mastery, after all, and is there any more masterful singer on the planet right now? At one point he picked up a microphone in mid-phrase, moved it six inches to the right, then moved it back again. It was completely fascinating, in the way watching an old-school star like Paul Newman close a car door is fascinating.

The mastery went way beyond charisma. Listening to Elling is a masterclass on how to make voice, words, melody and microphone work together to fix an atmosphere. The voice itself is astonishing. You’d think it would be too grainy and freighted with 4.00am melancholy to have any flexibility. But how Elling made it soar up at the end of I like the Sunrise, holding a high trumpet-like note for what seemed an eternity. The way he brings out the emotional charge in words is surprising, but amazingly effective. Instead of clarifying the words he blurs them, throwing the weight onto the curdling intensity of the voice.

You have to lean forward to catch the words, but that’s part of the effect. And at the other end of the scale, the sheer speed of his scatting in I’m Satisfied was mesmerising, drummer Kendrick Scott responding in kind.

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Kurt Elling Commands The Stage

IMN

April 8th, 2013

From The Reading Eagle

Jazz Fest review: Kurt Elling commands the stage at the Miller Center
By: John Fidler

Kurt Elling just doesn’t make a song his own. He dissects it, modifies it, examines it under a microscope then reassembles it in a way that reassures you of the song’s origins but suggests, oh so subtly, that this is something new altogether.

The scatting baritone artfully commanded the stage with a generous handful of these inventions Saturday night at the Miller Center for the Arts as part of the Boscov’s Berks Jazz Fest.

One of Elling’s signature talents is his vocalese, taking a tune, in one case Duke Ellington’s “I Like the Sunrise” and adding lyrics not written for the song. Using words of the 13th century poet Rumi and Von Freeman’s improvised melody based on Ellington’s, he produced an astonishing new work that crossed millennia.

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Jazz Vocalist Kurt Elling Has a Way With Words

IMN

April 3rd, 2013

From The Reading Eagle

Jazz vocalist Kurt Elling has a way with words
By: Tracy Rasmussen

Kurt Elling left the University of Chicago Divinity School just short of a graduate degree, but he’s a master at preaching with his music.

As an accomplished singer, Elling enjoys not only improvising musically but also lyrically. A devotee of vocalese, Elling writes lyrics for improvised music in a style popularized by Eddie Jefferson and Jon Hendricks.

“It’s a recently developed substream of poetry,” Elling said. “I came to it through the writing of Eddie and Jon and also others who picked it up and ran with it.”

Elling will perform at the Boscov’s Berks Jazz Fest on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Reading Area Community College’s Miller Center for the Arts. The Kutztown University Jazz Ensemble will open the show. Tickets are $39.

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Kurt Elling Found His Calling In Jazz

IMN

March 29th, 2013

From The Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New

Kurt Elling Found His Calling In Jazz
By: Jon Ferguson

Kurt Elling, whom many consider the best male jazz singer in the world, blazed a peculiar path to his career.

Elling, who will perform April 6 at Miller Center for the Arts on the campus of Reading Area Community College as part of the Berks Jazz Fest, didn’t grow up in what might be considered a typical jazzman’s household.

His was an acutely musical family, but his parents’ record collection skewed toward Bach and Mozart, not Ellington and Armstrong.

As a child, Elling mostly heard sacred music as his father was a Kapellmeister at a Lutheran church in Chicago.

“Most of the time we spent making music together was for liturgical reasons,” Elling 45, says during a telephone interview. “And it was really a strong and emotionally powerful musical environment because of that. My dad was very pious in the best possible way and was devoted to using music to move people and to remind them of inspiring things and to lift them up.”

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Onstage Powerhouse Kurt Elling

IMN

March 26th, 2013

From The Albany Times Union

Jazz singer Elling a stage powerhouse
By: Greg Hynes

There’s no question Kurt Elling is at the very top of the heap in the world of male jazz vocalists, and if you need proof, just take a look at the numbers. He has won the annual Downbeat Critics’ Poll in each of the past 13 years, and each of his 10 albums has been nominated for a Grammy Award.

At the intimate Swyer Theatre at The Egg on Sunday evening, he proved it once again — not with numbers this time, but rather with a powerhouse performance that shined the spotlight on his sheer talent and boundless imagination.

He opened his show with the most traditional jazz standard of his set, “Come Fly With Me,” but his approach to the tune was a 180-degree turn from Frank Sinatra’s signature rendition. Where Sinatra tackled the tune as a brash and brassy swing anthem, Elling took a decidedly more subtle approach, allowing his invitation to glide oh-so-gently rather than rocket into the stratosphere, his vocals floating almost weightless over his quartet’s churning rhythms.

Then he turned things around with Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me,” leaning hard into the slinky backbeat pumped out by bassist Clark Sommers and drummer Quincy Davis. Davis took the spotlight once again on the surreal hipster ode “Samurai Cowboy,” opening the tune in a sparkling call-and-response duet with the ever-inventive scat singing of Elling, who at one point took a solo — an exceptional one — that consisted of nothing more than rubbing the microphone on the sleeve of his jacket.

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Kurt Elling Sets a New Standard

IMN

March 15th, 2013

From The News & Observer

Kurt Elling sets a new standard for his tribute album
By: Craig D. Lindsey

For the past five years, Chicago-born, Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Kurt Elling has made Manhattan his home. And, after years of living there, he decided to record an album that’s something of a love letter to his new homestead. Thankfully, there was a building he would often walk by that gave him the inspiration for what would be on this album.

“As it happens, the Brill Building stands at a location that’s on the way to my manager’s office,” says Elling, 45, on the phone from St. Louis.

“So I pass it very frequently. And, at the same time, in response to New York, I didn’t really have any interest in creating yet another Cole Porter record or another record that dealt exclusively with standards – American standards or jazz standards – that was in response to New York. I wanted to find some other direction to go. And I felt that jazz musicians had not really tackled or been interested in Brill Building material as such. They may have done it piecemeal, and I don’t know if anybody had done it as a complete recording before.”

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Kurt Elling Defies Convention

IMN

February 15th, 2013

From The Nashville Scene

Jazz vocalist Kurt Elling defies convention with his homage to Brill Building standards
By: Ron Wynn

Some purist types might not even consider Kurt Elling’s newest release, 1619 Broadway: The Brill Building Project, a jazz record. Elling — perhaps the most honored stylist among contemporary improvising vocalists — deliberately chose a musical path mostly far away from the usual formula of theatrical/film pieces, established standards and/or reworked bop and swing tunes.

Instead, Elling is paying tribute to a site that’s been deemed rock ‘n’ roll heaven from a songwriting perspective. The Brill Building was the place where great tunesmiths from Gerry Goffin and Carole King to Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote anthems that are as much a part of the contemporary pop songbook as the selections of Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen or Cole Porter define the jazz ethos.

Elling, whose quintet performs this weekend in Franklin, dismisses the notion that singing “On Broadway” or covering The Coasters’ “Shoppin’ for Clothes” violates any past principles. “My collaborator [pianist/composer/arranger Laurence Hobgood] and I deliberately looked for songs we felt worked within a jazz framework, but gave me the freedom to do some different things, sing them in a manner that worked for me,” Elling tells the Scene. “And I’m very happy with this LP.”

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Kurt Elling Wins International Jazz Artist of the Year!

IMN

February 1st, 2013

From Jazzwise

Jazz FM Jazz Award Winners
By: Stephen Graham

The intention of the Jazz FM Awards, sponsored by US audio firm Klipsch, the organisers said ahead of the event, was to “recognise and commend those who have made exceptional contributions to the jazz industry during the preceding 12 months.” The chief executive of Jazz FM Richard Wheatly, who has just reported the station’s highest ever listening hours year-on-year, spoke at the beginning of the event which was held in front of an invited dining audience. Hosted wittily by singer Ian Shaw, a house trio with pianist Ross Stanley, bassist Mick Hutton and drummer Chris Higginbottom performed as part of the early part of the evening music.

The full list of winners were: UK Jazz Artist of the Year (public vote): Neil Cowley Trio; Gold Award for Outstanding Contribution to Jazz: Ramsey Lewis; International Jazz Artist of the Year: Kurt Elling; UK Instrumentalist of the Year: Nathaniel Facey; UK Live Shows of the Year: Gregory Porter; UK Vocalist of the Year: Carleen Anderson; Cutting Edge Award for Jazz Innovation: Robert Glasper; Best Jazz Media: Jazzwise magazine; Best UK Jazz Venue: Ronnie Scott’s; Best UK Newcomer: Beats & Pieces Big Band; Album of the Year: Saltash Bells by John Surman; and Lifetime Achievement Award: Ahmad Jamal.

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Kurt Elling On Piano Jazz

IMN

January 14th, 2013

From NPR Music

Kurt Elling On Piano Jazz
By: Grant Jackson

Vocalist and poet Kurt Elling brings his rich baritone to Piano Jazz for a set of tunes and spoken improvisations with host Marian McPartland. As a child, Elling sang regularly in church and discovered jazz while studying at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He began sitting in at the city’s jazz clubs, where his unique ability to improvise vocally led him in a new career direction. Elling has since worked with a variety of artists, including John Hendricks, Billy Corgan, David Amram, Buddy Guy, Charlie Hunter and Oscar Brown Jr. And he won a Grammy for Best Vocal Jazz Album earlier this year.

He kicks the session off with “Close Your Eyes,” accompanied by McPartland and bassist Rob Amster. Elling has a tremendous command over the instrumentation of his voice, with swinging phrasing of the lyric and a burning scat solo in “Close Your Eyes,” and he follows it by stretching out over the slow ballad “Embraceable You.”

“Well, I must say, I’ve never heard it done like that,” McPartland says. “You’re even slower than Shirley Horn, but it works.”

“That’s the thing: There are so many art songs in jazz,” Elling says. “It’s a much more rich experience for the singer than people think. You might like a song and sing it around the house, but they’re really very difficult songs.”

To read more and listen to the program click here

Kurt Elling's '1619 Broadway' - A "Gotta-Have"

IMN

January 10th, 2013

From The Huffington Post

CD Gotta-Haves
By: David Finkle

The dapper, soul-patched, off-handed Kurt Elling has said in performance, “I was brought up on 4/4 time.” That’s hardly an unusual influence for a singer, but as he’s put his gritty baritone to work over the last couple decades, he’s taken irrepressible liberties with that commonplace signature. So much so there are times when an Elling addict (as anyone must become on a first exposure to him) isn’t sure whether the hard-edged jazz crooner isn’t now chanting in 17/4 or 29/4 or who-knows-what/4.

…

Yes, the entire album — mostly arranged by him and 18-year-long accompanist Laurence Hobgood soars — like a multi-colored kite. The range is wide and includes a treatment of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” that’s a true heart-breaker.

N.B. : Elling is promoting the disk in current gigs during which he unleashes variations on the recorded 1619 Broadway inclusions. Dropping studio conveniences like over-dubbing and the addition of horns to his on-stage four-man band, he substitutes numerous scatting breaks that are drop-dead amazing in their accumulation of diga-diga-dos and the like.

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Pittsburgh's Best Concerts: Elling, Spalding, Gil

IMN

December 20th, 2012

From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Best Jazz Concert: Kurt Elling
By: Rick Nowlin

1. Kurt Elling (May 13, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild): This tour marked the 50th anniversary of benefit concerts that Frank Sinatra sponsored, and Mr. Elling and his quartet were in fine form throughout in paying him tribute. He had the rep as one of today’s great jazz singers, and that night I learned why.

2. Esperanza Spalding (Oct. 5, Byham Theater): A very, very close second. There was excellent playing all around from her 11-piece band, which ranged from early 1970s fusion and funk underneath her vocals and, of course, impeccable bass technique. She closed the show by scatting to a walking upright bass line. Think about that.

Honorable Mention: Gilberto Gil (Nov. 15, Byham Theater): This of course wasn’t a jazz show, but it deserves mention because of the energy and tightness of Mr. Gil’s performance. It became clear why he has become an icon in Brazil for being able to do this for so many decades.

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Confirmed Tourdates As Of December 6th, 2012

IMN

May 19th, 2013: De Parade, Jazz in Duketown Den Bosch, Netherlands [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
May 21st, 2013: The National Concert Hall Dublin, Ireland [Kurt Elling]
May 24th, 2013: Philharmonie Luxembourg Luxembourg City, Luxembourg [Kurt Elling special guest Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra]
June 7th, 2013: Palladium Theatre St. Petersburg, FL USA [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
June 8th, 2013: Miniaci Performing Arts Center Ft. Lauderdale, FL USA [Kurt Elling]
June 12th, 2013: Snape Maltings Concert Hall Suffolk, England [Kurt Elling with Big Band and BBC Concert Orchestra]
June 26th, 2013: Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music Rochester , NY USA [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
July 3rd, 2013: Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Netherlands [Kurt Elling Special Guest with Jazz orchestra of Concertgebouw]
July 6th, 2013: Garana International Jazz Festival Timisoara, Romania [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
July 10th, 2013: Jazzclub Unterfahrt Munchen, Germany [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
July 11th, 2013: Schloss Elmau Elmau, Germany [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
July 13th, 2013: Ghent Jazz Festival Ghent, Belgium [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
August 5th, 2013: Tonica Jazz Festival Guadalajara, MEXICO [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
August 16th, 2013: Shalin Liu Performance Center Rockport, MA USA [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
November 14th, 2013: The Rose Theatre Brampton, ON, CANADA [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building project]
November 15th, 2013: Brock University Center for the Arts St. Catharines, ON, CANADA [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building project]
December 4th, 2013: Janacek Theatre Brno, Czech Republic [Kurt Elling as special guest with Vojtech Dyk & B-Side Band with bandleader Josef Buchta]
December 5th, 2013: Congress Centre Prague, Czech Republic [Kurt Elling as special guest with Vojtech Dyk & B-Side Band with bandleader Josef Buchta]
December 6th, 2013: Congress Centre Prague, Czech Republic [Kurt Elling as special guest with Vojtech Dyk & B-Side Band with bandleader Josef Buchta]
December 7th, 2013: Porgy and Bess Vienna, Austria [Kurt Elling as special guest with Vojtech Dyk & B-Side Band with bandleader Josef Buchta]
December 31st, 2013: Northlight Theatre Skokie, IL USA [Kurt Elling]
January 24th, 2014: Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center Cutler Bay, FL USA [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
January 25th, 2014: Duncan Theatre, Palm Beach Community College Lake Worth, FL USA [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]
February 14th, 2014: Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts Brookfield, WI USA [Kurt Elling]
February 21st, 2014: Perth Concert Hall Perth, Scotland [Special Guest with Scottish Jazz Orchestra]
February 22nd, 2014: Queens Hall Edinburgh, Scotland [Special Guest with Scottish Jazz Orchestra]
February 23rd, 2014: Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Glasgow, Scotland [Special Guest with Scottish Jazz Orchestra]
May 10th, 2014: Koerner Hall Toronto, CANADA [1619 Broadway - The Brill Building Project]

"As always, Kurt Elling had some surprises up his sleeve..."

IMN

November 15th, 2012

From The Arts Desk

Kurt Elling and Sheila Jordan, QEH
A fabulous double bill featuring two of the greatest singers in jazz
By: Peter Quinn

In the second half, Kurt Elling performed a captivating set culled mainly from his latest release 1619 Broadway – The Brill Building Project. The eclectic song list included a brilliant reimagining of “Come Fly With Me” (great work here from Elling’s long-standing collaborator, pianist Laurence Hobgood), Sam Cooke’s crossover hit “You Send Me” featuring a killing groove from drummer Brian Connor, and the bold reharmonisations of Bacharach and David’s “A House is Not a Home”.

As always, Elling had some surprises up his sleeve, including a wonderful unaccompanied piece which built up layer upon layer of vocal lines into a swirling contrapuntal stream, before launching into a bracing “On Broadway”. Doc Pomus’s “Lonely Avenue”, a song associated with the Brill Building which doesn’t feature on Elling’s album, was most effectively stripped down here to just bass (Clark Sommers) and voice, with backing vocals from the band (guitarist John McLean added the subtlest textural hints towards the end). Elling concluded with one of his great crowd-pleasers, “Nature Boy”.

For an encore, Kurt and Sheila dusted down a playful “I’m In the Mood for Love”, in which Jordan made up new lyrics on the spot, including the brilliant (directed at Kurt) “I wish I could have him. I mean as my son, not my lover. I could be his grandmother”. Pretty good going for a singer who will be 84 this Sunday. Many happy returns, Ms Jordan.

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Interview: Kurt Elling Commends Wayne Shorter

IMN

November 13th, 2012

From The Guardian

Kurt Elling, jazz singer – portrait of the artist
By: Laura Barnett

When did you discover jazz?

By hearing people like Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee and Andy Williams. My folks liked to drive across the country to visit the grandparents. We’d be out in the desert, all the windows down, eating Velveeta cheese, with these guys on the radio. It wasn’t full-on jazz, but a lot of it was really swinging.

What was your big breakthrough?

Dropping out of graduate school. I’d been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn’t been doing well because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night – it’s hard to read Heidegger, but it’s especially hard if you’re half asleep. So I said to myself, “I’ve got nothing to lose – I’m living in a $100-a-month room, so I should really go after music.”

Each of your nine albums has been nominated for a Grammy. Are awards important?

Grammy nominations are certainly pleasant, but you can forget about them and lead a perfectly happy life – provided you have the approval of the musicians you work with.

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