Kurt Elling: Ambassador for this music of jazz

Kurt Elling remembers the moment he had his “jazz epiphany”.
The Grammy Award-winning vocalist who is headed our way late next month as part of the New Zealand International Jazz & Blues Festival in Christchurch says the moment he knew what he wanted to do for a living came while he was at graduate school in Chicago studying the philosophy of religion in the early 1990s.

“Although a lot of music that was played at home was almost exclusively church music, I had been introduced to jazz by some cats down the hall at college in Minnesota,” the now 50-year-old Elling recalls. “There was a big band on campus and I auditioned for that because I was familiar with Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald and had an aptitude for remembering the words. But it wasn’t until I was back in Chicago and trying to read dead German guys [Kant and Schleiermacher] by day while hanging out with jazz guys at night that there was a rebalancing of my scales.

“If there was an ‘aha moment’, it was when I was with my friend, the late Von Freeman [an acclaimed saxophonist], who was already in his 70s. I remember him shaking my arms and putting his around me and going, ‘hey man, go again – play another one baby’ at 2 or 3am. The next day my professor calls me into his office and goes, ‘Mr Elling, I have read your paper of Schleiermacher several times and I have come to the conclusion that you don’t know what you are talking about’. That was the moment I knew, ‘ah, I guess my time in graduate school is done and now is time to do what I actually want to do’.”

Fortunately divinity’s loss has been jazz music’s gain, with Elling (whose voice can span four octaves) and his collaborators in demand around the world for the past two decades.

He says his previous visits to New Zealand have been very precious and profound. “I still remember playing with the great Rodger Fox and his big band very vividly and very fondly.”

Elling says he’s also warmly received in Australia, is always happy to be in France, and in Holland, “people seem to think I’m much funnier and more clever than I actually am, which I find very rewarding”.

“There’s so much beauty in every place. I’ve been in Sarajevo several times now for a jazz festival there, but I couldn’t work out why they had one, so I asked. And my guide points to a man near me who was a big brute – a brawly kind of guy – and says. ‘When war come to Sarajevo – Slavi was philosophy student. Slavi drop out of college and he become killing machine and he saved many people and he killed many people. And when war was over, people remembered Slavi and want to do something for him. And Slavi says, ‘I would like to have jazz festival’, so we have jazz festival’. So I said, ‘does Slavi have any favourite tunes that I can play?'”

Elling has also become a regular performer on – and a big fan of – cruise liners.

“I was never a cruiser. I hadn’t event thought of it before I was asked to perform on one. But, it’s a beautiful floating ship – a city if you will – all the food is tremendous, the bar is open and every single person on these jazz cruises are fans and love the music. Every single concert is completely packed, the guys in the band have a really good time, I’m able to bring my family along, we go to beautiful locations and there are about 20 or 30 other bands along for the ride, so I get to catch-up with so many of my dear friends. It’s like a festival at sea.”

The Kiwi audience at Elling’s Christchurch festival show will be among the first in the world to hear tracks of his latest album The Questions. Billed as his “musical response to this moment in history and the widespread anxiety of our times”, it features Elling performing an eclectic range of songs, from original works to tunes by Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

“The album and its title was inspired by the [Bohemian-Austrian] poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who instructed us to try to live the questions of life, not to immediately demand answers to things. I think it’s an appropriate way for a jazz musician to go through life and their vocation – always asking, ‘what more can I play?’, ‘how can I be prepared to best collaborate with my peers?’ and ‘I wonder what will come from the audience tonight that will teach me something?’.

As for the album’s political message, Elling says with all the troubles in the US and the world around anti-immigrant ideas and allocation of resources, he couldn’t just “sit on the sidelines”.

“Even though I’m just a singer – and not even a protest singer – I think it serves my purposes to ask questions like, ‘why are we here now? How did we get here? How long do we have to stay here? And how can we reach a more peaceful and accommodating world for everybody?’

“My task as a singer is to be a little bit the ambassador for this music of jazz, tell stories and invite people in. I’m clear on my intention to make people feel a part of a concert, then I feel I can get some pretty heavy information to them. It’s a role I take very seriously.”

The Kurt Elling Quintet will perform at Christchurch’s The Piano on May 26 as part of the New Zealand International Jazz & Blues Festival.