Blog
Mar 11, 2017
Living Legends: Branford Marsalis Quartet with Kurt Elling
The Branford Marsalis Quartet will join forces with vocalist Kurt Elling for the next installment of JAZZ ROOTS, the concert series of the Adrianne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, Florida The event, titled...
Feb 22, 2017
PDX Jazz Festival Review: Branford Marsalis Quartet & Kurt Elling
The Branford Marsalis Quartet and singer Kurt Elling combined in the first major concert of the 2017 Portland, Oregon PDX Jazz Festival A packed audience in the capacious Newmark Theater heard a Thursday might performance that drew upon their...
Feb 20, 2017
Branford and Kurt: Iconic Harmony
It all started at a bar during a jazz competition two years ago That’s when Branford Marsalis – a member of jazz’s royal family, and former leader of Jay Leno’s live band – and Kurt Elling, acclaimed jazz vocalist,...
Feb 15, 2017
Branford Marsalis Quartet with Kurt Elling: Amazing
I was lucky to attend one of the best concerts I've ever seen last Saturday night at UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance (CAP) at Royce Hall, which has always been a great place to hear jazz, or for that matter, any kind of music...
Feb 05, 2017
Renee Fleming’s ‘Chicago Voices’ transforms the Civic Opera House with soaring melody
What would happen if some of the greatest voices to come out of Chicago joined forces on a single stage You'd hear more than just jazz and rap, gospel and blues, classical and folk You'd encounter the sound of the city itself, for...
Feb 02, 2017
Kurt Elling, Branford Marsalis take jazz on ‘Upward Spiral’
As an ambitious young vocalist coming up on the Chicago scene in the early 1990s, Kurt Elling cultivated his sound by his sitting in regularly with some of the toughest tenors in a city known for producing take-no-prisoner saxophonists Masters...
Feb 01, 2017
Melody is King for Branford Marsalis: ‘Upward Spiral’ comes to Scottsdale with Kurt Elling
Getting back to the basics of melody is no easy job Ask Branford Marsalis "My definition of melody is a sequence of notes so strong that, if every other aspect of the music fell apart, people would still want to hear it," says the famed...
Jan 23, 2017
Review: Branford Marsalis Quartet with special guest Kurt Elling at Jazz at Lincoln Center
Kurt Elling is a walking jazz machine who's utterly in command of his many talents, and who dispenses them with complete ease on the stage This award-winning, much-lauded singer has recently been collaborating with the Branford Marsalis...
Jan 20, 2017
Jazz at Lincoln Center: The Branford Marsalis Quartet with special guest Kurt Elling
Although Branford Marsalis famously spent 1985 to 1987 with Sting and played with hundreds of singers during his four-year run as musical director of The Tonight Show, only two of the 29 CDs and DVDs that he lists in the jazz section of his...
Jan 17, 2017
Upward Spiral: Branford Marsalis Quartet with Special Guest Kurt Elling
Perhaps my most played new album last year was "Upward Spiral," a brilliant collaboration by two formidable mid-career veterans, Branford Marsalis and Kurt Elling, solidly in the tradition of such classic team ups as Cannonball Adderley and...
Jan 12, 2017
Forceful vision: Kurt Elling joins Branford Marsalis at the State
Jazz moves to the form of the universe Tingling and spiraling behind the clear and automatic, it's an expression conjoining the human to the infinite: a chance to dig deeper into a sort of refined communication, an arena where the...
Dec 24, 2016
The Beautiful Day: Perfectly chosen Christmas gifts
This is subtitled Kurt Elling Sings Christmas, and it's as classy a set of seasonal songs and arrangements as you would expect from one of the classiest singers in the world Familiar songs like We Three Kings and Little Drummer Boy get...