Blog
Nov 07, 2011
Without Jazz, I’d Be Dead
Sometimes it's hard to know what to say to someone who helped you survive a serious illness Especially if that person is a well-known stranger In 2008, I was diagnosed with lymphoma At the time I was immersed in Nightmoves, a brilliant 2007...
Nov 07, 2011
The Claudia Quintet +1: What Is The Beautiful?
John Hollenbeck continues to astound as a composer, prone to value accessibility as much he does adventure, on the fascinating What Is The Beautiful As on the previous Claudia Quintet disc, Royal Toast, Hollenbeck extends the lineup with a...
Nov 07, 2011
John Hollenbeck’s Natural Impulses: What Is The Beautiful?
On this early September afternoon, John Hollenbeck is only a day away from visiting one of his favorite getaways, the Blue Mountain Center Located in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, the lodge offers established musicians, writers and...
Oct 30, 2011
Kurt Elling and the Klüvers Big Band at Birdland
With the schedule Kurt Elling keeps and the energy he expends on stage, you have to wonder how he does it He takes your breath away It's almost scary the way he leaves it all out there As you watch him, you're happy you're at the 8:30 pm show...
Oct 28, 2011
Elling takes the gibberish out of scat
To the untrained ear, scat singing can sound like gibberish How could the spouting of so many notes at a time — sung in syllables that sound more like baby babble than musical language — possibly be meaningful Talk to jazz...
Oct 26, 2011
Kurt Elling at Birdland: the vocal superstar dazzles
Nearly two years ago, Nate Chinen wrote in his column "The Gig†that Kurt Elling was "the most influential jazz vocalist of our time,†a statement so absolute that it triggered an all-out war in the comments section One non-fan...
Oct 21, 2011
A U.S. premiere: Kurt Elling in Chicago, with a little Danish on the side
It's been a pretty good year for Kurt Elling fans in Chicago With this weekend's appearance, and counting earlier visits to the Green Mill, the Old Town School of Folk Music, and Symphony Center (for the "United Sounds of America" series in...
Oct 19, 2011
What Is The Beautiful? “Pause. And begin again.”
Music and spoken-word collaborations can be problematic, especially in the world of jazz Though the passionate creation in both disciplines can be complementary, sometimes the results clash, leaving listeners either wishing that guy in the...
Oct 10, 2011
Fitting music to verse: What Is The Beautiful?
The temperaments of the poems of Kenneth Patchen (1911-72) have a wide frequency: they are brave, mystical, honest, funny, smart, tender-hearted, indignant, earnest, absurd, resistant, interior, out of step The drummer, composer and bandleader...
Oct 07, 2011
Claudia Quintet, featuring Kurt Elling & Theo Bleckmann, explores the poems of Kenneth Patchen
What use has the Claudia Quintet — whose textured, complex jazz relies on dense instrumental interplay — for a crooner like Kurt Elling A lot, it turns out This is evidenced on What Is the Beautiful, the New York ensemble's...
Oct 05, 2011
Jazz and poetry: The Claudia Quintet’s What Is The Beautiful?
Jazz and poetry have a longstanding relationship that precedes the postwar experiments of the Beats, dating back to the Harlem Renaissance As with any artistic collaboration, the cooperative efforts of improvising musicians and poets have...
Sep 28, 2011
Jazz singer Elling to serenade at Vassar
He was nominated for nine Grammys, won one, was featured on the cover of a handful of jazz magazines, and was recognized as Jazz Journalists Association's male singer of the year seven times For the Music Department's biggest concert of the...