The jazz world is celebrating as one of the jazz community's most revered artists finally received his just due. Premiere vocalist Kurt Elling won his first ever GRAMMY, the Best Jazz Vocal Album award for Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman.

Elling has been 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, and has been nominated for every album in his canon. This marks the artist’s first GRAMMY win on his stellar ninth nomination overall. The vocalist also co-hosted the GRAMMY Pre-Telecast awards show with fellow nominee and actress Tia Carrere and performed a beautiful duet of “God Bless The Child” with Concord Music Group label mate and nominee Lalah Hathaway.

Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman was recorded live at the Allen Room at Lincoln Center. Since its release, the collection has garnered 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, “some of the best ballad singing being performed today.”

Kurt Elling is currently recording his forthcoming album which is slated for a fall 2010 release.

Hearty and sincere congratulations, Kurt!

Kurt brings home his very first GRAMMY for the exquisitely beautiful, tasteful, and always swingin' Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman.

This was Kurt's ninth nomination -- each and every Elling album has been nominated. Laurence Hobgood was also nominated this year for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist for the title tune, "Dedicated to You," done lovingly with strings in a very hip arrangement. His solo on that tune is awesome, too.

Bravo and congratulations, Kurt! And congratulations, Laurence! And also to all the fabulous musicians on this album: the great and groovy Ernie Watts on tenor, bassist Clark Sommers, drummer Ulysses Owens, and the string quartet ETHEL with Cornelius Dufallo, Ralph Farris, Dorothy Lawson, and Mary Rowell.

Well done and well deserved, everyone!       

By Neil Tesser, Chicago Jazz Music Examiner, January 25, 2010

This just in: jazz vocal star Kurt Elling will be a winner this Sunday at the 52nd annual GRAMMY® Awards.

The Chicago-bred Elling’s is nominated for Dedicated To You (Concord), a highly romantic set of standards immortalized by saxophonist John Coltrane and vocalist Johnny Hartman. It’s the most accessible album, and also the most widely praised, in his discography, and it offers his best chance yet to take home the little gold Gramophone on January 31.

But whether or not he gets the award, that day is shaping up as a triumph for Elling nonetheless. Last week we got news that he’ll perform a duet with Lalah Hathaway -- daughter of Chicago’s own soul-music legend Donny Hathaway -- during the pre-telecast ceremonies.

Now comes word that Elling will also co-host the entire pre-tel program, giving the mostly non-jazz crowd at Staples Center a taste of his winning onstage persona and hip comedic sense. The announcement will be made in a GRAMMY press release first thing Monday morning.

The Chicago-bred Elling has made eight albums, and every one of them has garnered at least one GRAMMY nomination, although he’s yet to win the statue (making him the Peter O'Toole of jazz singers).

The pre-telecast GRAMMY ceremony actually accounts for the vast majority of the awards presented each year: only about a dozen awards of the 108 category winners are announced during the 3.5-hour GRAMMY telecast on CBS-TV, with the remaining (90-plus) winners presented several hours earlier. The pre-tel event has been significantly upgraded in recent years, from a rushed cattle call to a relaxed and classy ceremony featuring a live band, several performances, and guest presenters.

And this year, the always engaging and often comedic stylings of Kurt Elling.

The entire pre-tel event streams live Sunday, January 31, starting at 3 PM in Chicago. The CBS network telecast of the 52nd GRAMMY Awards begins at 7.

The 2010 Nightlife Awards have named Kurt Elling as Outstanding Jazz Vocalist in a Major Engagement.

Now in its eighth year, the Nightlife Awards honor the best of New York's cabaret, comedy, and jazz, bestowed by a distinguished panel of more than two dozen critics and experts. The awards concert is the only show where the winners perform, rather than give acceptance speeches, showing why they were selected.

Kurt and Laurence Hobgood will perform at the awards ceremony at Town Hall in New York City on January 25, 2010 at 7:00 pm.

Comedy writer and actor Bruce Vilanch is hosting. Among the evening's winners performing are Christine Ebersole, Cheyenne Jackson, Kurt Elling, Eric Comstock & Barbara Fasano, Anne Steele, Baby Jane Dexter, Johnny Rodgers, and Gretchen Reinhagen. Other winners include Michael Feinstein, Sheila Jordan, Hank Jones, Bad Plus, Louis CK, John Mulaney and Slovin and Allen.

Additional performers include Miranda, John Piazzarelli and Jessica Molaskey, James Barbour, Jim Caruso, Tovah Feldshuh, Howard Fishman, Nellie McKay, Jay Leonhart, Noah Racey & the NY Tap Ensemble, and Martin Vidnovic.

Ticketing and other information for this star-studded evening is here.

As always, congratulations, Kurt!

On December 2 when the 52nd annual GRAMMY nominations were announced in Los Angeles, renowned jazz vocalist Kurt Elling was honored with his eighth GRAMMY nomination for "Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman" in the Best Jazz Vocal category. Laurence Hobgood's arrangement of the title tune also received its own GRAMMY nomination. That's Laurence's second for arranging.

Every one of Kurt's albums has been GRAMMY nominated. Eight albums, ten nominations in all -- that's excellence!

"Dedicated to You" 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." The Chicago Tribune declared, "His buoyantly creative lines in “Dedicated to You" and arialike phrases in "Lush Life" represent some of the best ballad singing being performed today."

Just before Thanksgiving, Kurt 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 performed at a fundraiser for then-state senator Obama. Then in 2005, Elling he and his wife purchased the Obama's Hyde Park condominium. 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 Chicago's 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.

The GRAMMY Awards ceremony will be held January 31st at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and broadcast on CBS.

As always, bountiful and heartfelt congratulations, Kurt and Laurence!

Guess who’s singing at dinner?

Tuesday night, when President and Mrs. Obama welcome the prime minister of India to their first State Dinner, poll-topping Chicago vocalist Kurt Elling will take the stage to provide the entertainment. He’ll be joined by his longtime pianist and musical director, Laurence Hobgood, performing with an orchestra directed by Marvin Hamlisch (whose own list of awards would make a nice little family portrait – Emmy, Oscar, and Tony).

Although he has been living in New York for the last year and a half, most listeners and critics still do consider Elling – recently named Male Vocalist of the Year in the Downbeat Readers Poll (ahead of Tony Bennett) – to be a “Chicago vocalist.” There’s good reason. He made his reputation with nearly a decade's worth of weekly showcases at the Green Mill, the setting for his fourth album. Before that, he learned the ropes with such Chicago mentors as Ed Petersen and Von Freeman. Even as Elling has polished his much lauded vocal style, he retains the hometown grit and daring that make Chicago's jazz scene unique.

Chicago is also where the singer first met then-Congressman Obama -- in the course of a real-estate deal. I know, I know, you hear “Chicago,” real estate,” and “Obama” in the same sentence, you get a little worried. But this was nothing sleazy: when the Obamas moved to the Chicago house they now own, they sold their Hyde Park condominium to Elling and his wife.

Official State Dinners, as you may have already read, are impossibly baroque events featuring silverware by the pound and glassware by the yard. On the other hand, well-traveled jazz musicians like Elling and Hobgood are famous for their cool, unflappable approach to both the highs and the lows they encounter on the road. So is this a case in point? Is even a White House gig “just a gig”?

I reached Elling briefly Monday night, en route to his sound check at the South Lawn of the White House. He had just enough time to confirm the facts before saying, “I have to go now and do what the Secret Service guys are telling me to do.”

I think that sentence alone lifts this one out of “just a gig” territory.

By Neil Tesser, for the Chicago Jazz Music Examiner.com, November 23, 2009

Once again, Kurt Elling has been named Male Vocalist of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll and in its Readers Poll. It's a clean sweep!

The 74th Readers Poll results are in the December 2009 issue of DownBeat.

Kurt Elling: 604 votes
Tony Bennett: 519 votes
Bobby McFerrin: 347 votes
Mark Murphy: 190 votes
Joao Gilberto: 183 votes

Critics Poll results were announced in the August issue.

This is the fifth year Kurt has topped the DownBeat Readers Poll, winning in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and now 2009.

He's won the top spot in the Critics Poll ten years in a row, ever since 2000.

As always, hearty congratulations, Kurt!