Dec 24, 2011
“What Is the Beautiful?” in Best Downtown Music of the Year – Vocal Edition
Beat poetry accompanied by jazz has a much-maligned reputation It seems terribly self-indulgent for someone to go up on a stage and say whatever and then some musicians play whatever and somehow insist that it's profoundly meaningful and if you...
Dec 23, 2011
Top 5 Jazz Vocal Performances Of 2011
How many ways can you sing a song Why do some pieces work only with certain vocalists Why is it so rare to have the right fit between a singer and a song Is it simply a matter of arrangement, or does the style and sensibility of a particular...
Dec 15, 2011
Kurt Elling thrills his audience in Blue Bell, PA
Kurt Elling thrilled the audience at this Pennsylvania college with his seemingly inexhaustible, four-octave baritone voice and dramatic songs that swept from one emotional high to another The show began with Elling and his rhythm...
Dec 14, 2011
What Is The Beautiful? — A celebratory Patchen tribute
The confluence of poetry or spoken word with improvisational music goes as far back as the Harlem renaissance, became synonymous with the Beats, figured heavily in proto-rap music (Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets) and continues to flourish...
Dec 02, 2011
The Jazz Genius of Kurt Elling
Vocalist Kurt Elling was in St Louis recently to perform at Jazz at the Bistro Arguably, he is one of the top jazz singers in the world today He was born in Chicago and raised in Rockford, Ill, where his father was the Choir Director of a...
Nov 30, 2011
2011 GRAMMY Nomination for “The Gate”!
On November 30 when the 54th annual Grammy nominations were announced in Los Angeles, renowned jazz vocalist Kurt Elling was honored with his ninth Grammy nomination for The Gate in the Best Jazz Vocal category Every one of Kurt's albums has...
Nov 20, 2011
Kurt Elling: Opening The Gate on the Next Phase of His Illustrious Vocal Career
Kurt Elling's creative and commercial impact in jazz over the past 15 years makes the following hard to fathom: thousands of fans throughout the world might have been deprived of one of the most celebrated voices of this generation had this...
Nov 10, 2011
Elling has helped reinvent jazz singing for modern times
Jazz singers were out of vogue for a while, perhaps because the focus on trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the young lions who emerged in his wake put the emphasis on instrumentals But in recent years, vocals have regained their place in the...
Nov 09, 2011
BBC Music Review: What Is The Beautiful? Vital, living art
In the 1950s, American poet Kenneth Patchen was a pioneer of poetry with a live jazz accompaniment, performing with Charles Mingus and others While some falsely aligned him with the Beats, Patchen remained an elusive and idiosyncratic artist up...
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...