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Kurt Elling: 1619 Broadway: The Brill Building Project
by C. Michael Bailey
Where female jazz vocalists are plentiful, male jazz vocals exist in vast minority. With Mark Murphy in twilight, Kurt Elling has few peers in the realm of male jazz vocals where sheer inventiveness and muscularity are concerned. Elling's facility is one so great and his musical vision so clear that, at least for the time being, no one can touch him. He further establishes himself as the preeminent vocalist with the ambitious and successful 1619 Broadway: The Brill Building Project. ...
Continue ReadingKurt Elling: The Gate
by John Kelman
Kurt Elling The Gate Concord Music Group 2011 It's amazing how small age differences can impact on the music that resonates in our youth--experiencing it after the fact being so different than living in its time. For 43 year-old vocalist Kurt Elling, the music that reached his young, impressionable ears came from sources as diverse as Earth, Wind & Fire's I Am (Columbia, 1979) , the early-1980s incarnation of King Crimson and Discipline ...
Continue ReadingKurt Elling: The Gate
by AAJ Italy Staff
Pochi giorni fa parlavo di Kurt Elling con Marta Raviglia che, come il lettore saprà, è la migliore tra le giovani vocalist italiane, il cui talento è pari solo alla spericolatezza. Ma, forse, il lettore non sa che Marta si è laureata, qualche anno fa, in Lingua e Letteratura Inglese con una tesi proprio su Elling (discussa con Alessandro Portelli), per cui sull'argomento è un'autorità assoluta. Sebbene non avesse, al tempo della nostra chiacchierata, ancora ascoltato il disco in oggetto ...
Continue ReadingKurt 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 ...
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