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March in the Midwest With Kurt Elling |
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Written by Andrea Canter, Contributing Editor
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Wednesday, 01 March 2006 |
Elastic vocalist Kurt Elling is six for six—six recordings, six Grammy
nominations. The most inventive of male jazz singers and lyricists of
his—or perhaps any—generation, Elling and his quartet (pianist Lawrence
Hobgood, bassist Rob Amster, and drummer Kobie Watkins) continue their
Wednesday night residency in March at Chicago’s Green Mill as well as
visiting other venues in the Midwest, including stops in
Champaign-Urbana (March 11), Cleveland (March 12), and Detroit (March
16).
Still in his 30s, with his string of hit recordings and Vocalist of the
Year decrees from DownBeat and others, Elling could easily ride on his
high tide of acclaim. But that’s not his style. As intense and cerebral
as he is poetic and engaging, Elling is a master of improvisation, both
vocal and literary, twisting covers such as Guess Who’s “Undun” and
“Detour Ahead” and inventing lyrics to unsung gems from Grolnick
(“Nighttown”) and Coltrane (“Resolution”).
Elling’s father was a church musician, and playing instruments and
singing was just a natural part of growing up. Although he never
formally studied music, young Kurt participated extensively in choral
music through high school and college. But it wasn’t until college at
Gustavous Adolphous in Minnesota that he was initially turned on to
jazz, hearing records of Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon, Dave Brubeck
and more in his dorm. He performed during his college days, attracting
audiences with his scatting which at that time was not very familiar
with Midwest, small town audiences. Still, he was not really thinking
of singing as his career, and headed to the University of Chicago for
graduate studies in Divinity. Notes Elling, “I was not there to become
a priest but an academic--a professor. That having been said, I was
there to try to answer deep level questions of meaning that were
gnawing at me… Graduate school sharpened my mind, my analytic and my
writing skills. It gave me the tools to root around in questions of
meaning.”
Citing key influence as Mark Murphy, John Hendricks and Frank Sinatra,
Elling is best known for his scat, vocalese, and a variant informally
known as “rant.” Says Elling, Ranting is an informal term a
friend of mine came up with for improvised melodies coupled with
improvised lyrics. Sometimes there is no melody - just an improvised
story or ‘open thought process.’” Elling describes his first impromptu
effort at ranting: “I was doing wedding band things... On these gigs,
we'd be in the middle of ‘Isn't it Romantic’ or something like that,
and the leader would come up while I was singing and say in my ear,
‘Tell them that they're going to cut the cake now,’ or ‘five minutes to
the bouquet toss.’ So instead of stopping singing, I'd just start
making up the announcement in song, often trying to rhyme the lyrics
and sometimes making up little stories to go with it, singing all the
while over the changes.”
Why is Elling special? Because he can hold a note forever and yet it
never seems too long nor does it waver off the mark. Because his unique
phrasing makes even familiar standards such as “April in Paris”
memorable. Because his classical training is never too far removed,
even from covers of Horace Silver or John Coltrane. Because his
arrangements have shapes as exquisite as their sounds (e.g., Curtis
Lundy’s “Orange Blossom”). Because he is the musical equivalent of a
gold medal Olympian gymnast, “leaping octaves in a single bound”
(Pamela Espeland, Jazz Police), shifting meters as well as dynamics and
pitch as if it is all a ball of vocal silly putty. Because he has the
ultimate control of his own instrument—his voice, sliding up and down
like a melodic slinky toy, splattering rounds of notes like machine gun
fire, filling space like a horn soloist.
Elling further stands out because he has assembled one of the finest
supporting rhythm sections in jazz—pianist Lawrence Hobgood, the master
of tight improvisation, be it comping with zesty chords or inventing
blues-infested ripples; strangely unheralded bassist Rob Amster,
creator of ethereal, haunting lines, magical bent note and double-stop
phrases, and pulsating ostinato vamps; and young drummer Kobie Watkins,
who has made his splash in the company of Orbert Davis and Bobby Broom,
and was selected as a Young Lion by the Jazz Institute of Chicago.
In March, the Kurt Elling Quartet holds down their usual Wednesday
night gig at Chicago’s Green Mill, March 1, 8 and 15 at 9 pm
(
www.greenmilljazz.com)
and will appear with the Champaign-Urbana
Pops Symphony, March 11 (
www.cusymphony.org/season-elling.html);
at Nighttown in Cleveland, March 12 (
www.nighttowncleveland.com), and
in Detroit at Orchestra Hall, March 16. They will also be featured at
the Berks Jazz Festival in Reading, PA, March 22-24
(
www.berksjazzfest.com). In April the quartet will tour eastern Europe.
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 Tuesday, 02 December 2008
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