The Gate

Concord Records | 2011

Produced by the legendary Don Was (The Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan), the record features inspired interpretations of songs by The Beatles, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, and Stevie Wonder. Nate Chinen’s JazzTimes cover article on Elling that called the recording “luminous” and, “a splendid representation of Elling’s art at its leanest, its most expressively distilled.” And USA Today called the record “further proof that Kurt Elling is the best singer of his generation.” “The Gate” marked Elling’s ninth consecutive GRAMMY® nomination.

Track Listing

  • Matte Kudasai
  • Steppin' Out
  • Come Running To Me
  • Norwegian Wood
  • Blue In Green

  • Music by Marc Johnson
    Lyric by Kurt Elling

    You dig /everything in life / everything you’ve seen
    Everywhere you’ve been / you have been thinking all of the time

    Everything that’s happened to you / has been made or construed to brood
    At least passively in the life of the mind

    You dig / memory is such / nothing gets away
    Everything you touch / finds a place / deep inside your inner clutch

    And it seems gigantical scenes / pouring in from your outer dreams
    Wrinkle mental stuff in your own skully hutch

    And once you think it / naught you can do to stop / you’ve simply got to cop
    Nevertheless the thought can really wig you

    Like sometimes I’ll / go for a run / there’s nothing I expect to run to
    When all of the sudden the thought begins / a feeling like in my brain there lives an alien / And it gets funky then

    Then I think / maybe I am just a little man in a space capsule
    Riding ’round in a balloon / deep down inside my head
    (Some big old giant’s head – dig?)

    I’m driving the running / the motion sequence of running and pushing and Pumping the oxygen deep in the plumbing / sumping on to some-way
    Some-how keep on moving the giant / keeping him pliant

    Right now an arch-typical synap-tically of light / a firing anatomical hit
    Is right now getting down / dig?
    Shooting a rapid-fire sparkle-chemical in the atmosphere, here

    & thinking that I’m thinking of thinking / only makes me think a kink
    In a way / that only goes to cite that Descartes was right!

    You dig /everything in life / everything you’ve seen
    Everywhere you’ve been / you have been thinking all of the time

    Everything that’s happened to you / has been made or construed to brood
    At least passively in the life of the mind

    You dig / memory is such / nothing gets away
    Everything you touch / finds a place / deep inside your inner clutch

    And it seems gigantical scenes / pouring in from your outer dreams
    Wrinkle mental stuff in your own skully hutch

    Such!

  • After The Love Has Gone
  • Golden Lady
  • Nighttown, Lady Bright

  • Music by Joe Zawinul
    Lyric by Kurt Elling and Phil Gladston

    Come / sit by my side a minute
    We’ve been walking in a waking dream / forever, it seems

    Everything known is living and dying in equal parts
    Everything that’s light and dark is the heart of it / together

    Even the saddest of endings / has in it seeds of another start
    Another chance to make another mark in it
    To begin in now and shoot upright / finding always in the stars

    Stand your ground with me / hold on to what wants to be
    You’re empty now / right down to your favorite memory
    Of long ago and far away / a lost and faded day

    Sing your secrets out / the crying, laughing and lonely shout
    I’ll still hear your song / long after the crowds have come and gone

    Why can’t we just break free / free to be a wild new gravity
    Time can bend / just you wait and see
    Hope depends on suffering fools like you and me

    This longest night can never stay / day’s just a dawn away

    And what is light but the love we make?

Personnel

Kurt Elling: voice
Bob Mintzer: tenor saxophone
John McLean: guitar
Laurence Hobgood: piano
John Patitucci: bass
Terreon Gulley: drums, percussion (1, 3-5, 8 & 9)
Kobie Watkins: drums (2, 5, 7)
Lenny Castro: percussion (2, 3, 5, 6)

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