Blog
Oct 27, 2010
Vocal adventurer wants to make friends for jazz
The death two months ago of the majestic Abbey Lincoln was one of the last nails in the coffin of the generation of great jazz singers that included Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan Their legacy, however, is still alive and...
Oct 27, 2010
Perfect Present — Kurt Elling on Being in the Moment
Kurt Elling is a hard taskmaster — hard on himself and on his audiences The Grammy award-winning vocalist has made a rigorous study of the great jazz singers and strives for total engagement with music through improvisation and...
Oct 04, 2010
Kurt Elling: la voix à tout faire
Les amateurs de jazz vocal s'étaient donné rendez-vous au Palais Montcalm, hier, où se produisait le chanteur de l'heure en la matière: Kurt Elling L'Américain, qui a raflé un prix Grammy plus tôt cette année, a...
Sep 15, 2010
LIVE: Kurt Elling Quartet + 1 @ Tanglewood Jazz Festival
Kurt Elling and Laurence Hobgood have been a team for sixteen years In that time, Elling has given us some of the best vocal jazz in a generation, all of it backed by Hobgood's brilliant musical direction and sterling piano work Elling and...
Sep 10, 2010
Kurt Elling at Tanglewood
Last night Kurt Elling returned to the Tanglewood Jazz Festival delivering a stunning set demonstrating why at 42 he is considered the greatest pure jazz singer of his generation He won a Grammy for his 2009 CD Dedicated to You It is inadequate...
Sep 03, 2010
Pianist with Kurt Elling takes center stage at Tanglewood
Jazz pianist Laurence Hobgood travels under the radar He's known as the marvelous collaborator with singer Kurt Elling, a pairing that continues to make a deep imprint with Elling's sophisticated, hip inventions over Hobgood's luscious and...
Jul 05, 2010
Kurt Elling at Ronnie Scott’s: Dazzling Hipness
In his on-stage banter, the Chicago singer Kurt Elling can sound as if he's swallowed an instruction manual on the kind of cheery badinage the Fast Show's jazz critic would have relished But the affectations only accentuate the impact of his...
Jul 01, 2010
KE Quintet a must-see at Ronnie Scott’s in London
A dazzling smorgasbord of scat, vocalese, poetry and stream of consciousness, Kurt Elling's first ever residency at Ronnie Scott's achieved immediate lift-off last night Singer Elling's quintet – long-time musical collaborator Laurence...
Jun 09, 2010
After blown save, Cubs turn to Kurt Elling in the seventh
The jazz community in Chicago has always gravitated toward the Cubs, for one main reason: if your lifestyle demands that you work at night, you need a team that plays in the daytime But this Friday, the jazz crowd has an extra incentive to...
May 27, 2010
Jazz vocalist Elling in tune with the masters
Jazz singer Kurt Elling doesn't have to prep too much for Sunday night's performance at Davies Symphony Hall, where he joins the Count Basie Orchestra They're revisiting the classic music Frank Sinatra made in the 1960s with the peerlessly...
Apr 24, 2010
Live Jazz: The Monterey Jazz Festival All-Stars at Royce Hall
When I last saw the Monterey Jazz Festival All-Stars, they were opening the 52nd MJF before a raucous Friday night crowd, the hour allotted to them not nearly enough to hold all their collective talents Seven months later, in the more...
Apr 22, 2010
The Road to Jazz Success
"Jazz musicians are improvisers, meaning that each jazz musician is thinking like a composer—only in real time, in collaboration with other musicians, in front of an audience,†says 2010 Grammy winner Kurt Elling '89 The goal each...