Nightmoves

Track Listing

• Nightmoves
• Tight
• Change Partners/If You Never Come To Me
• Undun
• Where Are You?

  Music by Jimmy McHugh
  Lyric by Kurt Elling, based on Dexter Gordon’s phrasing of the original melody from his 1962 recording, “Go”.

  Where is your heart, my love? I can’t believe you’d forget.
  I haven’t finished with love yet, and I’m wondering where – where can you be?

  I still see your smile in my memories and photographs
  Pictures of hand holding laughter
  I guess there’s more that you’re after – but you’re teaching my songs to cry

  Making love with you was easy – it was a thrill
  And I guess that’s how it goes – hearts break every day
  I just thought you’d go just a bit more gently.
  And I hoped you’d pick up the telephone if I called.

  My angel, where can you be? You have flown out –
  Out of time, out of love, out of my arms – leaving me with a heart full of empty

  So where – baby where – are you?

  And now – starting now and my whole life through must I go on just pretending
  Where is my happy ending? All I wanted to play from long ago was your true love Romeo

  I need you baby, but darling where, baby, where are you?

• And We Will Fly

  Music by Alan Pasqua
  Lyric by Kurt Elling and Phil Galdston

  Love / let’s catch the wind
  An evening breath / on naked skin
  Out where the sun / meets the Monterey Sea
  A dream / that’s as real as can be

  On the way / the day will fade
  The blue will shade / a touch of jade
  And make a sight / very few ever see
  Tonight / when the sky meets the sea . . .

  We can glide / though ocean sky
  And cover waves / with ocean eyes
  Out where the moon / meets the wondering sea
  A dream / that’s as real as can be . . .

  And the sea will kiss the sky
  And we will fly
  And we will fly

• The Waking
• The Sleepers
• Leaving Again/In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning

  Music improvised by Keith Jarrett
  Lyric by Kurt Elling, based on Keith Jarrett’s untitled improvisation from his 1994 trio recording, “At The Blue Note”

  Sleeping / Waking / Crying / Leaving again / It’s morning / I have to go
  Though every night pretends / begins in quiet hoping that it never ends / they’re always ending again / breaking another dream / a dream where we could breathe in the heavy curtained prairie air of summer night / watching lightning over wheat fields through a bedroom window / And the prairie gently rose up with a feeling and embraced us

  And when morning found us I pulled you to me and promised to stay
  But that was the night / and now day

  In the we small hours of the morning / while the whole wide world is fast asleep
  You lie awake and think about the girl / and never ever think of counting sheep

  And when your lonely heart has learned its lesson / you’d be hers if only she would call
  For in the wee small hours of the morning / that’s the time you miss her most of all

• Body & Soul
• I Like The Sunrise

  Music by Duke Ellington
  Original Lyric by Mitchell Parrish
  Vocalese Lyric by Kurt Elling based on Von Freeman’s improvised melody from Freeman’s 2002 recording, “The Improvisor”.
  The lyric adapts the words of the 13th century poet Jelaluddin Balkhi, or Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks.

  I like the sunrise / ’cause it brings a new day
  I like a new day / it brings new hope they say

  I like the sunrise / blazing in the new sky
  Nighttime is weary / oh, and so am I

  Every evening I wish upon a star that my brand new bright tomorrow isn’t very far
  When the heavy blue curtain of night is raised up high / clear out of sight

  Then I like the sunrise / so heavenly to see
  I like the sunrise / I hope it likes poor me

  Don’t worry about saving this music / or be scared if the singing ends
  or the piano breaks a string / for we have fallen to a place where everything is
  music and singing / everything is recovered and new / ever new and musical
  and even if the whole world’s harp should burn up / there would still be hidden there
  the spirit of song there to linger on / and even if a candle’s blown out by wind the fire smolders on in an ember and then sparks again / the singing is a drop / just a drop in oceans of seas / grace keeps it moving through bodies like these

  and the sound of a life sends an echoing out / the poem sings willingly in each newborn’s crying shout / but it’s growing slowly / and keeps many secrets / stop the words and listen / feel the echo of it starting / open a space in the center of your beating heart
  and let spirits fly in and out

• Europe Bonus: Luiza
• Europe Bonus: Body & Soul (Live in Amsterdam)
• Japan Bonus: Well, Did You Evah (What A Swell Party This Is)
• Web Bonus: Body & Soul (Kennedy Center Cut)

  Music by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton, Johnny Green
  New Lyric by Kurt Elling, based on Dexter Gordon’s improvised melody from Gordon’s 1976 recording, “Homecoming – Live At The Village Vanguard”.
  This complete lyric as performed live at the Kennedy Center, November 2006.

  My heart was misty-hued and lonely / from missing you
  Without you near-around me / man, was I blue!
  My eyes would show what I could not say / while you were away
  Even so, my tears would flow in endless, hopeless replay
  Love was always only hearsay. Yet,

  I’d drift around town with downcast dreams in my pockets
  Stumbling every step
  Trying to motion my frozen feelings in thick-set flop sweats
  My mind would echo with treacherous, senseless empty
  My head was inept
  Time was a pathway filled with regret.

  Life was just a trial of wanting / things that are true now
  Now it’s something I can say aloud –
  Now that I know we two can make life anew
  & come shining through

  I’ll make us a space / inasmuch as love can do
  A place safe from thunders / made by fearlessness and wonders
  Now that love has come / now that I have found you

  I watch the sun rise on you / and on the hour you wake
  Not knowing waking from dreaming or remembering
  Songs I sing you then / I hope you will hear
  If ever you feel fear or coming to an end.

  Love is the only thing to balance fearing
  Loving the deepest depths appearing.

  Waiting too long for a sign you would come was what
  nearly killed the spirit in the house within me
  and when you appeared you brought an answer after praying
  like a sailor sighting landfall on horizons of green
  or sunrise / after endless nights of burning scenes
  or having sense be restored to me.

  Finally the music has a reason to be singing.

  Hearing voices / calling out of every corner of the city
  Glittering pretty / but it seemed like empty pity here
  Chasing them / feeling a stinging
  searching to find a lasting thing
  but always / following whatever was flashing
  people thought I had the mentality of a shambles
  or a house deserted

  I remember stories of Orpheus and his love ruinous / Euridice
  Spirited away / on their wedding day
  bitten by a snake upon the way / and Euridice had to stay
  in under-day – SAD!

  Just as bad / Orphie had / to stay up and lay up with us here / but without her.
  Some Stun!
  Can you just imagine / living without it /
  love that was destined to perfect / everything that was imperfect
  but Orpheus went & played songs for the man

  jamming a plan
  sounding a span
  taking a stand
  burning in sand
  fanning the legend of the man who playing music
  made the sun to stand
  and sad though the ending was / I can feel it ’cause
  I would do the same for you, ‘Cause

  Knowing what we live is part of history
  A myst’ry philosophic asked a thousand years ago
  Living after living spent in killing or in giving or unwilling
  Under-fulfilling – a cosmic freak show
  And in all that Shiva takes in closing one massive eye
  Darkening sight and sky
  Hundreds of lifetimes we must try / hoping to break the cycle
  And enter heaven’s eye
  But heaven’s here / it comes clear
  When loving is living & understanding giving / power

  Wonder when we’ll get together or if life’s a broken song
  Just because we’re so headstrong
  And we’ll never get along /
  It seems like the throng meanders along
  But just as sad as just as sappy just as angry just as scared as sad
  You’d think we’d be happy just to be straight-standing
  On the earth every new date
  Just to breathe in the air and to love every day away
  We’re given a life to try all our breath to mend the tears over the world where it is clear the world is broken.
  But still the suffering and terrors go on
  & every time I think we may be coming to the brink / the glue on
  something pushes us / and down we fall to shatter in pieces

  And that’s why our teachers teach “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”
  to the smallest ones:
  We need a fight song to keep us moving along
  I should’ve sung it when thinking you gone.
  You weren’t lost / you were coming
  I’ll teach you / I hope to
  Give you love that shows you wonders that only love can show
  And more than you’ll ever know / I do love you so.
  You have got a light living in you / in with and through you
  & That’s what a father’s love should teach you.

  My life a heaven you are making / you have got me in the bag
  You know I’m yours for taking home or for forsaking
  I’ll . . . give my life up to make sure / you’re lacking nothing

  That’s the gist of it.
  You’re the north, south, west and Eden east of it all
  (I’m least of it all)

  How come was I / Pie in the sky / more do or die /
  sighing a cry / never-a-life: / high?

  I hope someday you will see just what I mean
  To take on / such a class / ic and write / something mass /
  -ive without / seeming spastic when I sing the song
  Or seem freaky
  When I mean only to take what could sound so old-creaky
  And make a marvel / as a gift to you
  And, in such a small way /
  Pay tribute to a man whose lavish gift gave birth to such melodies as this one
  (& that was Mister Dexter Gordon)

  and so my baby then perhaps (then) you will realize
  I have found loving
  With

  YOU!

  Thanks for listening.