Branford Marsalis and Kurt Elling

By Howard Mandel, for Jazz Beyond Jazz
December 15th, 2015

Saxophonist Branford Marsalis's quartet and singer Kurt Elling prepared for their upcoming recording in a rare four-night stand at Snug Harbor in New Orleans last week, and photo-journalist extraordinaire Marc PoKempner went each night, enthralled.

"It was sort of an open rehearsal for the recording, so the set list was the same every night," PoKempner reported by phone, "but it changed a lot, too. The first night Kurt asked the crowd, 'Does anyone here speak Portuguese? If so, you're going to want to leave now,' because he sang a lyric in Portuguese, reading it phonetically off some paper, and slaughtered the language. But by the fourth night, he had it down."

PoKempner knows Elling from Chicago, but he says in NOLA, Kurt learned he had to almost holler for attention. "He isn't known here, he doesn't perform here. People had come to hear Branford, who'd start out each night with what I gather was the Tonight Show theme.

He's got a very energetic, swinging, fun band [Joey Calderazzo, piano; Eric Revis, bass; Justin Faulkner, drums] and though he himself isn't the most physically expressive, he blows his ass off, has a very strong tone, and gets up to play. He blew some very abstract stuff, even like something Fred Anderson would have played — but always brought those breaks back to the swinging, melodic hook. Branford's band did a couple of songs before Kurt came out.

read more: http://kurtelling.com/news/press_article_978.php