Kurt Elling prepares ...

Kurt Elling prepares his radio play "The Big Blind" for its NYC premiere this weekend. #KurtEllinghttps://t.co/QhW4I2i8vX

— JazzTimes Magazine (@JazzTimes) 26 de fevereiro de 2019

Kurt Elling, Laurence Hobgood and Roy Nathanson

Deft poetry: Kurt Elling, Laurence Hobgood and Roy Nathanson on blending jazz with verse. https://t.co/CpmfUuqjFK

— JazzTimes Magazine (@JazzTimes) December 19, 2016

#KurtElling - The Beautiful D...

@huahinjazz - The latest news on jazz music and festivals. #huahinjazz #ezybooking Kurt Elling: The Beautiful D... https://t.co/WqJUt8phRh

— HuaHinJazzFestival (@HuaHinJazz) 6 de dezembro de 2016

Claudia Quintet w/ Theo Bleckmann & Kurt Elling

Claudia Quintet just played a breathtakingly beautiful set w/ Theo Bleckmann & Kurt Elling at #chijazzfest pic.twitter.com/kQvD7TDuYj

— AccuJazz.com (@accujazzradio) September 6, 2015

Kurt Elling review ....

Kurt Elling review: Dazzling skills stay one step back from the cliff edge

American jazz singer Kurt Elling: a rare and remarkable virtuosity. Photo: Anna Webber

June 4, 2016 - 9:15PM
John Shand

The moment came in Skylark. The almost relentlessly buzzing imagination and invention fell away as Gary Versace began a piano solo so soft, so sparse and so fragile that Ulysses Owens stopped playing the drums altogether and Clark Sommers provided the barest underpinning on bass. It was the musical equivalent of a coup de theatre, not in the sense of spectacle, but because the contrast was so laden with poignancy that you felt the room catch its breath, and because it was the only expression of that most naked of all emotions: vulnerability.

Kurt Elling possesses a rare and remarkable virtuosity used in the cause of daring sonic adventures and intelligent, wide-ranging musical enterprises. Nor is he lacking in humanity, as his vocalese setting of lyrics to a Dexter Gordon tenor saxophone solo on Body and Soul showed. This was high art, jointly celebrating Gordon's improvising genius and Elling's sophistication as a wordsmith, not to mention his almost uncanny ability to pitch tricky intervals in a melodic line. Then there was the lyric he set to Ellington's I Like the Sunrise drawing on the work of the great Persian poet Rumi, and what other singer scours as far afield as gems by Jaco Pastorius (with searing guitar) and Carla Bley?

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/kurt-elling-review-dazzling-skills-stay-one-step-back-from-the-cliff-edge-20160604-gpbiau.html#ixzz4AePo1vDf 
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Branford Marsalis and Kurt Elling

Branford Marsalis and Kurt Elling to release new album June 10 on @MarsalisMusic and @SonyMasterworks/OKeh: https://t.co/EpMZEWEwBP

— DownBeat Magazine (@DownBeatMag) April 7, 2016

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

CD REVIEW: Kurt Elling – Passion World

Kurt Elling – Passion World 

(Concord Records. CR- 36841. CD Review by Peter Jones)

Kurt Elling has never been one to fight shy of risk. Long stretches of vocalese? Try A New Body and Soul from the album Nightmoves. Notes seemingly held for minutes at a time? How about Higher Vibe from Man In The Air? For vocal acrobatics and jazz chops in general, Kurt’s your man. But here, on a musical voyage around the world, he stretches himself even further than usual. How about singing in five different languages? No problem – there are songs in Spanish, French, Portuguese and German, as well as English. And although he ducks the challenge of Icelandic, to be fair, Bjork did Who Is It? in English too. 

And it isn’t only the languages, but the singing styles: on Si Te Contara by Cuban composer Félix Reina Altuna, Elling adopts the declamatory macho Hispanic vibrato, with all the theatrical passion one associates with male vocalists from this part of the world. On Loch Tay Boat Song, the style is softer, more reflective, with a rich accompaniment from Tommy Smith and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, arranged by Florian Ross (who is German).

read more: http://news360.com/digestarticle/DS8K-KXNl0CYgspNbPVJrg

My Foolish Heart by Kurt Elling

My foolish heart by Kurt Elling at the Montreal Jazz Festival, Montreal, Canada, July 4, 2007.

Kurt Elling – The Messenger

Released on April 8, 1997, ‘The Messenger’ is the second studio album by Kurt Elling.

REVIEWS
allmusic
This is one of the most interesting jazz vocal sets to be released in 1997. Kurt Elling covers a wide range of music, continually taking chances and coming up with fresh approaches.

JazzTimes
For flat-out scat, check out the roller coaster ride through ‘Ginger Bread Boy,’ a manic chase in which Elling’s cannonades are answered by furious barrages by Laurence Hobgood and drummer Paul Wertico. On the stylistic flip-side, Elling, with a gorgeous intro by veteran Chicago tenor player Eddie Johnson, waxes lyrical with a richly-embossed ‘Prelude to a Kiss.’

RateYourMusic
To really enjoy this album, you have to really enjoy Elling — all of him, from his scat singing to his hipster pose. In the wrong mood he can sound insufferable but open yourself to his style and accept all its eccentricities and he can be wonderful.



Track listing
1.Nature Boy (Eden Ahbez) – 6:09
2.April in Paris (Vernon Duke, Yip Harburg) – 5:10
3.Beauty of All Things (Kurt Elling, Laurence Hobgood) – 8:08
4.The Dance (Laurence Hobgood) – 1:34
5.Prayer for Mr. Davis (Kurt Elling, Laurence Hobgood) – 6:03
6.Endless (Edward Petersen) – 4:48
7.Tanya Jean (Donald Byrd, Kurt Elling) – 10:17
8.It’s Just a Thing (Laurence Hobgood, Eric Hochberg, Paul Wertico) – 4:31
9.Gingerbread Boy (Jimmy Heath) – 5:03
10.Prelude to a Kiss (Duke Ellington, Mack Gordon, Irving Mills) – 5:27
11.Time of the Season (Rod Argent, Paul Atkinson, Colin Blunstone, Hugh Grundy, Chris White) – 5:53
12.The Messenger (Kurt Elling, Edward Petersen) – 9:03

Personnel
Kurt Elling – vocals
Cassandra Wilson – vocals (11 -12)
Laurence Hobgood – piano, synthesizer
Eric Hochberg – acoustic bass
Rob Amster – double bass, acoustic bass, electric bass
Edward Petersen – tenor saxophone
Jim Widlowski – drums, percussion
Paul Wertico – drums, percussion
Orbert Davis – flugelhorn, trumpet
Eddie Johnson – tenor saxophone

Kurt Elling – arranger, art direction, producer
Laurence Hobgood – arranger, producer
Paul Wertico – producer

Danny Kopelson – engineer
Roger Heiss – engineer, mixing
Greg Calbi – engineer
Ed Blalach – assistant engineer

Patrick Roques – design
Neil Tesser – liner notes
William Claxton – photography

Label Blue Note
(Source Kurt Elling)

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." Elling also professes a deep respect for and kinship with horn players. "They have that organic gesture of breathing that comes out in the lines they play," he says. "You can only play so long before you have to take a breath."

Specifically, he leans toward lyric horn players like Paul Desmond, Dave Brubeck's longtime alto saxophonist. Elling sings a vocalese "Those Clouds Are Heavy, Ya Dig," based on Desmond's own tune "Audrey," which was written in tribute to Audrey Hepburn. Elling takes his poet's pen to the tune and draws from his divinity studies in composing an existentialist fable.

McPartland is a seasoned collaborator herself, and she follows with "Days of Our Love," a tune she wrote — and for which Peggy Lee provided a lyric. And the session takes a new direction as Elling reads a selection of poems by free-jazz icon Ornette Coleman, with improvised accompaniment by McPartland. The combination of jazz and spoken word is probably most widely known through Jack Kerouac's readings set to a bop soundtrack. Indeed, Elling has arranged a stage version of readings of Beat poetry at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. But Coleman's poetry is more reflective than the staccato, in-the-moment fever of Kerouac, and Elling phrases the words with measured recitation.

"That's something I've never done before," McPartland says. "It's interesting to play off that."

Elling follows with a soulful take on "You Don't Know What Love Is," which demands attention, and the session closes with a swinging and scatting version of the aptly titled "The Masquerade Is Over."

Originally recorded Jan. 14, 2002. Originally broadcast June 25, 2002.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126826662&sc=nl&cc=jn-20100516

Kurt Elling Earns His 9th Grammy Nomination for "Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman"

Honor Comes One Week After Headlining the First State Dinner at the White House

Sunday night when the 52nd annual GRAMMY nominations were announced in Los Angeles, renowned jazz vocalist Kurt Elling was honored with his ninth GRAMMY nomination for Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman in the Best Jazz Vocal category. The album was recorded live at the Allen Room at Lincoln Center and has received critical praise. The Washington Post wrote: “With his soaring vocal flights, his edgy lyrics and sense of being on a musical mission, he has come to embody the creative spirit in jazz" while the Chicago Tribune wrote, “His buoyantly creative lines in “Dedicated to You" and arialike phrases in “Lush Life" represent some of the best ballad singing being performed today."

This past week he earned perhaps one of the highest honors of his career; headlining the First State dinner at the White House. As President and Mrs. Obama welcomed the prime minister of India last Tuesday, Elling performed “Nature Boy" with an orchestra directed by Marvin Hamlisch, whose own lists of awards include an Emmy, an Oscar, and a Tony. Elling has a special relationship with the Obamas, having first met the President when he and his wife purchased their Hyde Park condominium from then-state senator Obama some years ago. A well known jazz enthusiast, President Obama counts himself as one of Kurt Elling's biggest fans.

Although Elling has been nominated for every album in his canon, he has yet to garner a win. There is no doubt that he is the most revered male vocalists in music, not just in jazz. Named “the jazz stand-out male vocalist of our time" by the New York Times and “perhaps the most distinctive singer on the American scene" by the Sunday Times UK, Elling has never hesitated to take on a musical challenge. From the creation of multi-disciplinary new works for the Steppenwolf Theatre to his Four Brothers collaboration with Jon Hendricks, Mark Murphy and Kevin Mahogany, from his epic vocalese versions of John Coltrane's “Resolution" or Dexter Gordon's “Body and Soul" to his creation and direction of a commissioned two-hour extravaganza for the City of Chicago's millennial celebrations, Elling has applied his unsurpassed creativity to one project after another. Elling's unmatched languid baritone is only equaled by his embrace of true artistic exploration, making him one of America's most unheralded national treasures. Indeed, those traits along with his cool Sinatra swagger and style has earned Elling top spot placements in the DownBeat Critics' and Jazz Times Readers' polls year after year. Although mainstream audiences have inexplicably eluded him, it is likely that 2010 will be Kurt Elling's year.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=46497

Kurt Elling to Release New Live Album

Grammy nominated and critically acclaimed jazz vocalist Kurt Elling will release Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman on June 23rd, Kurt Elling's eighth album and second release for Concord Jazz.
The live collection was recorded in January 2009 at the Allen Room in the Lincoln Center, New York as part of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series. The new 12-track release features an all-star cast of musicians including saxophonist Ernie Watts, the Laurence Hobgood Trio and string quartet, ETHEL.

Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman is a stunning spectrum of music, both vocal and instrumental. The album opens with an introductory interpretation of the American Songbook classic, “All or Nothing At All,” in which the interconnectedness between Elling’s vocal and Watt’s tenor saxophone calls up immediate references to the Coltrane/Hartman source. The transformative interpretations of songs such as “Autumn Serenade,” “Nancy With The Laughing Face” and “You Are Too Beautiful” are definitive examples of how to remain true to the inner essence of a song. Track Listing:
1) All or Nothing at All (6:50)
2) It’s Easy to Remember (A Jazz Story Memory) (4:05)
3) Dedicated to You (6:35)
4) What’s New (Instrumental)- Ernie Watts (2:40)
5) Lush Life (4:39)
6) Autumn Serenade (3:10)
7) Say It (Over and Over Again) (6:40)
8) They Say It’s Wonderful (3:59)
9) My One and Only Love (3:26)
10) Nancy with the Laughing Face (4:56)
11) Acknowledgements (:38)
12) You Are Too Beautiful (8:10)
Dedicated to You is due out June 23rd via Concord Jazz.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=36866

Jon Hendricks & Kurt Elling

Jon Hendricks and Kurt Elling jam out at Toronto 2008 IAJE Convention following "Vocalese Spoken Here" interview with Christopher Loudon of JazzTimes. Jan 10th, 2008 @ 3PM.

Take Five Al Jarreau Kurt Elling

Kurt Elling - Nature Boy - Jazz and Orchestra

Thursday April 17th 2008, Opera House, Sydney, Australia
Nature Boy with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Described by New York Times as 'the standout male jazz vocalist of our times', Kurt Elling's smooth four-octave baritone voice is matched only by his emotional range: from quietly crooned love songs to virtuosic vocal displayed. For multi-award winner and 2008 Grammy Award nominee, Elling, it's about communication. He says 'I want people to be surprised, to be moved, to laugh, to remember something important they may have forgotten, I want them to have what they need.'

Kurt Elling - My Foolish Heart

Kurt Elling at Diesel Playhouse

Concert Dates: 12/04/08
Event Description: Kurt Elling is the preeminent male jazz singer today. The New York Times describes him as hugely talented. With a four-octave range and a rich baritone voice, Elling displays astonishing technical facility and emotional depth. Often regarded by many as the natural heir to jazz pioneer Jon Hendricks, Elling is the contemporary voice in vocalese the art of putting words to improvised solos of jazz artists. Most recently, Elling was the recipient of Male Vocalist of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll for the ninth straight year in a row.
Diesel Playhouse Address: 56 Blue Jays Way Toronto ON M5V 2G3 Canada

Kurt Elling Jazz and Orchestra - Nature Boy

Thursday April 17th 2008, Opera House, Sydney, Australia.