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Kurt Elling: Denver, Colorado, April 9, 2011
by Geoff Anderson
Kurt EllingSoiled Dove UndergroundDenver, COApril 9, 2011 Perhaps it's ironic: jazz wants to be free, yet boundaries abound. Nowhere has a boundary been more touchy or controversial than the line between jazz and rock. Miles Davis blurred it, trounced it, trod upon it, spat on it. And, in some circles, he was vilified; in others celebrated. Still is. You'd think the famous quote from Duke Ellington would put this sort of thing to rest, ...
Continue ReadingMeet Kurt Elling
by Craig Jolley
This interview was originally published in February 2000.Chicago music scene On my new recording [Kurt Elling Live in Chicago, Blue Note] I'm really proud to feature a lot of the musicians who have treated me well and who have taught me and who have been on the team with me from the get-go. Not only because of the debt of gratitude that I owe them, but also just because they're really beautiful musicians and deserve to be heard, ...
Continue ReadingKurt Elling: Recasting Brilliance
by Cicily Janus
When Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane recorded their one and only album together they created a moment that shaped the art of vocal jazz. An instant of beauty transformed into history. Despite a bias towards the original recording, after listening to Kurt Elling's lustrous and drawn butter version, it was clear the past could be silenced to make way for innovation. This is Elling's first recording since his hit, Night Moves (Blue Note), in 2007. To say that this album ...
Continue ReadingKurt Elling: Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman
by Andrew Velez
This is a live collection recorded as a part of Lincoln Center's American Songbook Series, a creative homage to the now classic 1963 John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman recording. For this occasion a jazz trio led by Laurence Hobgood, vocalist Kurt Elling's long-time musical partner, pianist and arranger is nestled into the tender brilliance of the string quartet ETHEL. One of the last great exponents of vocalese, Elling is no less a great singing storyteller. Early on ...
Continue ReadingKurt Elling: Dedicated To You
by A. Lienhard
Dedicated To You is a tribute to one of the most beloved and beautiful recordings in jazz, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. On that six song album, John Coltrane introduces a relatively unknown singer named Johnny Hartman. The two musicians had only just met one another, however in a mere three hours, they produce a classic. Hartman unfortunately never gains much recognition beyond this one album. Coltrane obviously fares a bit better. Kurt Elling is a standout ...
Continue ReadingLaurence Hobgood / Charlie Haden / Kurt Elling: When The Heart Dances
by Chris May
Man, this is a beautiful album. How could it be otherwise? An intimate, unhurried conversation between Laurence Hobgood, since 1994 vocalist Kurt Elling's musical director, and one of the finest jazz pianists out there, and the magisterial Charlie Haden, featured bassist in bands led by saxophonist Ornette Coleman, pianist Keith Jarrett and guitarist Pat Metheny, among a truck load of other distinctions. The inimitable Elling guests on three tracks.
In his liner notes, describing the genesis of When ...
Continue ReadingKurt Elling: Nightmoves
by Samuel Chell
If the verbiage generated by a release is proportionate to its profitability, Kurt Elling must be firmly ensconced in the black. Nightmoves has already garnered volumes of ink (All Music Guide devotes three times more space to it than Miles Davis' Kind of Blue). Perhaps equally impressive testimony to Elling's eminence is that he can afford to take four years between albums and, like Sinatra in the 1950s, keep his Down Beat poll-winning streak as top male jazz vocalist intact. ...
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