Blog
Dec 04, 2016
The Beautiful Day: Capturing the hope and celebration found in Christmas
Jazz vocalist Kurt Elling says of the holidays, "In the Western world, whether you're Christian or not, Christmas has some kind of seasonal relevance to youYou really cannot escape the holiday—even if it is just coming at you on...
Dec 03, 2016
The Beautiful Day: CD of the week
Our CD of the week is a tasty, jazzy holiday offering from vocalist Kurt Elling, with fine jazz support from his compatriots The Beautiful Day: Kurt Elling Sings Christmas is a thoughtful, wonderfully arranged collection of new and old...
Nov 30, 2016
Kurt Elling’s The Beautiful Day: Effervescent music making
If you run screaming from Christmas muzak that loops endlessly in the malls, then Kurt Elling's holiday album is for you In characteristically idiosyncratic fashion, the singer sets out to remake and explore the songs, and the spirit, of...
Nov 12, 2016
Review: Kurt Elling at Ronnie Scott’s, 10th November 2016
The idea had been to bring Christmas to Ronnie Scott's a few weeks early, by playing pre-season material from Kurt Elling's new album, The Beautiful Day But a recent election result seemed to be weighing on his mind; as a result, a...
Nov 09, 2016
Kurt Elling at Ronnie Scott’s – inclusiveness, curiosity and warmth
Kurt Elling, the great American jazz singer, was a divinity student with a church-musician father – experiences that fuelled in him a philosophical intelligence and mistrust of dogma, alongside an affection for communal celebrations that...
Nov 08, 2016
Kurt Elling, Ronnie Scott’s, London – ‘Superb technique’
Christmas came early to Ronnie Scott's this year American singer Kurt Elling's latest release, The Beautiful Day, subtitled Kurt Elling Sings Christmas, reimagines more than a dozen seasonally themed songs as life-affirming...
Oct 28, 2016
The Beautiful Day: The holiday spirit in all of its wondrous complexity
A poetic and lyrical holiday-themed album, vocalist Kurt Elling's The Beautiful Day is much more than a seasonal production The album follows up his eclectic 2015 album, Passion World, and arrives on the heels of his collaboration with...
Aug 15, 2016
Melody in Motion
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis’ Quartet has an illustrious 20-year history spanning a series of 15 powerful albums that have tackled everything from John Coltrane's A Love Supreme in its entirety, to 2012's scorching Four MFs...
Aug 05, 2016
Upward Spiral: Sax and vocals intertwine
The first tableau in this vivid 12-song set is an upbeat croon through "There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' for New York" that launches acerbic stabs from Marsalis' soprano sax Later, sax and vocals intertwine romantically on "Blue...
Aug 04, 2016
Upward Spiral: Master saxophonist meets great jazz vocalist
Branford Marsalis has mastered most tricks of the sax-player's trade – traditional song-playing lyricism, an advanced post-Coltrane technique (lately coupled with a classical one), and long experience of playing with singers, notably...
Jul 31, 2016
Kurt Elling with the Keith Ganz Trio at Jazz Standard
If there's any genre of music that's truly built on the idea of spur-of-the-moment change, it's jazz And so, in that very spirit, we had this performance The audience that came down to hear the inimitable Kate McGarry on this...
Jul 29, 2016
Upward Spiral: Collaboration in the truest sense
These days democracy in jazz singing is vanishingly rare On record a star singer will sublimate the band to mere accompaniment Conversely a star instrumentalist might submit to one or two guest vocal spots to placate the PR Yet here we have a...