Blog
May 19, 2016
Beauty Becomes These Musicians: Upward Spiral, The Branford Marsalis Quartet with Special Guest Kurt Elling
To one extent or another, jazz has always maintained a discriminatory dividing line between vocalists and instrumentalists Instead of being viewed as equals — artists on par with all the rest, possessing the same good sense, skill, and...
May 16, 2016
How Grammy Award-Winning Jazz Singer Kurt Elling Developed His Chops Singing Motets by J.S. Bach
Though Kurt Elling is one of the most well-loved and highly praised jazz singers of our time, he first developed his chops singing Bach motets As Elling returned to his native Chicago for performances at City Winery, he spoke about how...
May 14, 2016
Kurt Elling:
Kurt Elling has two or three reasons to be excited – not least among them his return to Australia "with a hot band" – his words He talks like that, spicing up his phrases with words like "cat", "hot", "magic"; he talks like the...
May 02, 2016
Jazz at the White House: The Obamas host jazz greats to celebrate International Jazz Day
Before we get to the message, let us praise the logistics management What poor, sleep-deprived soul was tasked with editing down Friday evening's White House jazz concert, hosted by the Obamas, which stretched toward two and a half...
May 01, 2016
Jazz Australia Interview with Kurt Elling
JK: One of the standout things to me is that you have a wonderful breadth of projects You are about to release a recording with Branford Marsalis, you are doing a concert with Lang Lang, you write for Steppenwolf Theatre What inspires you and...
May 01, 2016
Aretha Franklin Pays Tribute to Prince With ‘Purple Rain’ at White House Jazz Concert
"There is something fearless and true about jazz," President Barack Obama said in his opening remarks Friday (April 29) at the White House concert celebrating the fifth annual International Jazz Day — and despite the fact that the show...
Apr 30, 2016
Global Flavors and Asides to Obamas at White House Jazz Gala
A few songs into the fifth International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert, on the south lawn of the White House on Friday night, a pointedly multicultural coalition took the stage Chucho Valdés on piano and Paquito D'Rivera on...
Apr 11, 2016
Branford Marsalis Quartet, Kurt Elling bring ‘the thing’ to historic recording
Grammy-award-winning saxophone legend Branford Marsalis has always been about inclusion, opening those doors to everybody — not just the physics- and harmonics-minded jazz brainiacs out there unduly focused on chops and technical...
Apr 09, 2016
Blowing in from the Windy City: Pharez Whitted and Kurt Elling collaborate with Butler University jazz groups
Jazz has gone to school for decades, and while there is debate about how much institutionalization is good for the music, there's no doubt that more well-schooled musicians have been brought into its purview than since the Swing Era And...
Apr 07, 2016
Branford Marsalis To Release New Album with Kurt Elling on June 10
Things are looking up for saxophonist Branford Marsalis and vocalist Kurt Elling, who will add a shared title to their respective discographies The Branford Marsalis Quartet will release Upward Spiral, featuring Elling as a guest vocalist, on...
Mar 26, 2016
Review: Mark Murphy Memorial Concert Celebration
We don't often appreciate the impact of someone's life until it's over Many of late vocalist Mark Murphy's extended family and friends may have been meditating on this during the memorial for him at Saint Peter's (Mar...
Mar 13, 2016
Kurt Elling Remembers Mark Murphy 3.14.32 – 10.22.15
I first heard Mark Murphy sing at a little place in Minneapolis called the Artists' Quarter It was 1987 or '88 I don't know whose idea it was among us provincials to undertake hours of snow-driving from our little college in the...