Credit: Karina Felix

THE GATE swings through Europe and then back home 

In March, Kurt played three dates in Scotland with Tommy Smith and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra to standing ovations and great reviews.  Tommy Smith paid Kurt a high compliment, saying the band had reached a new level from working with him.

The culmination of their collaboration was a storied, storming evening in London at the Barbican, with Kurt and the band, special guest French accordion virtuoso Richard Galliano, and Smith and the SNJO.

Among the glowing reviews, here are excerpts from Peter Bacon, writing for The Jazz Breakfast: 

Elling's new album, The Gate (out now on Concord) provided the meat in the first half: Joe Jackson's Stepping Out was the self-selecting opener, Samurai Cowboy provided the vocal showcase, King Crimson's Matte Kudasai showed Elling's original choice of material and his ballad subtleties, and Night Town, a Don Grolnick tune enhanced by a reading from Duke Ellington's autobiography, flagged up his beat generation leanings.

 

The band - Harish Raghavan was on bass, Ulysses Owen Jr on drums - was able to get a real work-out, and the spotlight fell frequently on its latest addition, guitarist John McLean.

 

In between, Elling squeezed in Dedicated To You, from his Coltrane/Hartman, Grammy-winning disc of the same name, and Coltrane's Resolution from his Nightmoves album, with SNJO leader Tommy Smith getting a solo and Galliano dropping jaws all around the hall with lightning runs across the buttons.

 

For round two, swing was the thing, and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra played hard and tight.

 

Elling was, of course, the shining star at the centre, taking chances, scatting superbly in exchanges with Galliano and Smith, digging deep into the groove in front of the big band, using his full range of lustrous tones, from low and rich chocolatey to those unexpectedly light, airy, floating high notes. 

 

I think Tommy Smith referred to Kurt Elling as "a great human being" - last night's audience would agree.

After London, Kurt and the band swung into Lisbon and Castelo Branco, Portugal; Luxembourg; the Rotterdam International Jazz Festival and Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Munich, Vienna, Rome; Terrassa, Spain; back to Germany for the Burghausen Jazz Festival; Basel, Switzerland, and finally Gorzow, Poland.  Their luggage almost kept up with them, only going missing near the end.

v v v

April finds them on the road again on another barnstorming schedule, this time in the United States:  Fresno, California; Albuquerque, Denver, San Diego; Eugene, Oregon; Seattle, Santa Barbara, Hollywood; and finally, in Berkeley, California, with very special guest Ernie Watts on saxophone. 

There's also a special performance April 10 in Fayetteville, Arkansas in a double bill with the John Pizzarelli Quartet, to make up for the KEQ February gig that was cancelled because of snow and ice.

See APRIL GIGS below for details. 

Kurt is featured in major cover stories

as well as in a long profile in DownBeat!

Jazzwise Magazine in the UK featured Kurt in its March issue with Come Running to Me, a great feature article by Peter Quinn, and two related sidebars, Spirits from Above about Jon Hendricks and Kurt Elling by Edward Randell, and Living Organism, where producer Don Was talks with Peter Quinn about Kurt and Laurence's extraordinary musical partnership.

In the April issue of JazzTimes, Nate Chinen explores What Makes a Jazz Singer in his long, thoughtful cover story about Kurt.

In their conversation about what is a jazz singer, Kurt tells Chinen:

"So you're an improviser. But if you're a jazz improviser, you also study, in a very deep way, the history of great jazz artists. Firstly and primarily singers, but not exclusively. And you have an opinion about what made Betty Carter great. And you have an opinion about what made Joe Williams unique. And you have an opinion about Mel Torme one way or another. And you love it, and you spend time thinking about it." Another pause, this one brief. "So you've got somebody who studies music itself. Somebody who studies jazz singers. Somebody who studies Wayne Shorter, and Herbie, and Bird. If you're a jazz person, you love jazz." Deep breath now. "Somebody who studies themselves. Because you can't really be a vessel of deep meaning unless you're asking to have deep meaning revealed to you. And to be an embodiment of something more than you."

"What I think we captured with this record," observes Was, "is that Laurence and Kurt have hit this plane where there's no affectation; there's no trying to be clever or cerebral. This is music that's coming from the heart. It's infused with the truth of the song as they see it. These guys are treading some very new ground in subtle ways."

You can also read more in Chinen's recent post on his blog, THE GIG.

For Jazz Inside Monthly, Gary Heimbauer interviewed Kurt at length in their March issue.  You can read excerpts here.  Kurt also talkss about the difference between recording in the studio and in front of a live audience, his earlier album, Dedicated to You, learning from the jazz tradition, the sacrifices of his vocation, how he goes about writing a vocalese lyric, and more.

You can download of the entire March 2011 issue (PDF) for free here. Kurt's interview is on pages 6-8, and 30.

Invitation to Epiphany is Ken Micallef's fine profile of Kurt in the April issue of DownBeat.

And check out the many great reviews of The Gate and recent concerts in Articles & Reviews on Kurt's website.  

Win KE t-shirts, books, and charts!

We are so proud to announce the release of THE GATE! We've been getting a very encouraging response from everyone who has heard it so far.

 

Now we'd love to know what you think. (We made it for you, after all!)

 

Give us a shout over at the Forum on my website. We'll be doing a drawing of names from those who submit comments about THE GATE to win free t-shirts, books and other K-Ephemera.

We've had seven lucky winners in our random drawings so far:

GeoffC

Iqpilates
Lauren Lucille

mjr
JazzSailor

Tamara_Lea
James in Omaha

Kurt Elling with Laurence Hobgood, and featuring John Patitucci, John McLean, Bob Mintzer, Terreon Gully, Kobie Watkins, and Lenny Castro. Produced by Don Was.

Watch the behind-the-scenes

video and listen to Don Was

talk about The Gate, Kurt, and the band. 

  Short Takes

v

In Google Images, search for time lapse ferris wheel

v

Forum

MySpace

Newsletter signup

Newsletter archive