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 28, 2011
Kurt Elling & The Gate garners the 2011 Edison award for Vocal Jazz
The prestigious 2011 Edison award for Vocal Jazz has been awarded to Kurt Elling for The Gate The Edison is considered the Dutch Grammy The Edison is one of the oldest music awards in the world Only the Grammy is older by one year The first...
Oct 26, 2011
DownBeat’s Male Vocalist of the Year for 2011!
Once again, Kurt Elling has been named Male Vocalist of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll and in its Readers Poll It's a clean sweep! The 76th Annual Readers Poll results were just announced and will be featured in the December 2011 issue...
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
Kurt Elling with the Klüvers Big Band
Kurt Elling hosts the Klüvers Big Band from Denmark on their first visit to the United States They're performing together in Chicago, New York, Washington, DC, and Boston from October 21 - November 2 Kurt says, I am very happy to have...
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 11, 2011
Kurt Elling gives voice to Kenneth Patchen’s poetry on “What Is The Beautiful?”
On October 11, Cuneiform Records released What Is The Beautiful by The Claudia Quintet +1 with special guests vocalists Kurt Elling and Theo Bleckmann "Soon it will/Be showtime again," recites Kurt Elling at the outset of The Claudia Quintet's...
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...