KE everywhere at the Monterey Jazz Festival

The 49th annual Monterey Jazz Festival, presented by Verizon, will provide a weekend of R&R Sept. 15, 16 and 17 to soothe and excite fans.
The weekend of sizzling singers on the Jimmy Lyons Stage in the Monterey County fairgrounds’ main arena will include Kurt Elling, a vocalese master whose voice alternates between perfect mimicry of instruments to diverse, dramatic dialogue lyrically delivered.

Elling, Monterey Jazz Festival’s 2006 artist-in-residence, will have a busy weekend all over the fairgrounds. He will extend the musical mentoring role he has played for several months with the talented teens deemed the best in America, named outstanding soloists and selected for the all-star Next Generation Jazz Orchestra during the festival’s 36th annual national high school competition held last spring.

Elling will be the set leader for the Friday night premier of “Red Man – Black Man” with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, led by John and Jeff Clayton and Jeff Hamilton as special guests in the arena.

His weekend duties will include the intellectually and culturally stimulating conversation “Jazz and Creative Collaboration” with Laurence Hobgood at 4 p.m. Saturday in Dizzy’s Den; a Saturday night return to open Dizzy’s Den at 8:30 p.m.; and a guest stint with the Next Generation teenagers Sunday afternoon in the main arena.

— Taylor Jordan, Black Press News