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v  The day after Wangaratta Jazz, John McBeath wrote about it in The Age (Australia):

The festival headline star, American vocalist Kurt Elling, was reserved for the closing performance on Sunday night. Elling appeared at Wangaratta in 1998 and has gone from strength to strength since.

He sang some lesser known standards in his supremely professional style, sounding at times like a combination of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr but with an added high-energy scat ability. It was a great performance involving comedy, consummate musicianship and adept jazz phrasing at any tempo.

The Grammy award-winning vocalist has made a rigorous study of the great jazz singers and strives for total engagement with music through improvisation and spontaneity. He has mastered scatting, singing and writing vocalese lyrics for jazz standards and current repertoire. He can sing a beautiful ballad and he knows how to touch people's hearts. His lyrics are sensitive and intelligent.

Elling will be a big drawcard at Wangaratta Jazz, having built a strong Australian following since his first appearance at the festival in 1998.

He clearly has the discipline as well as the gift of ingenuity with which he says jazz musicians are born. But for him the key to experiencing music, as performer or audience member, is to be "fully present."

Read the full article here.

''I think that we can present some pretty challenging stuff to people in a way that I hope is endearing; challenging in a way that moves them emotionally and isn't just an exercise in intellectualism,'' Elling says.

Continuing to experiment would seem basic for any artist, yet many settle for safety. Elling has expanded jazz singing in the same way that Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan and Betty Carter did before him.

Read the full article here.