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Kurt Elling has risen to
international prominence as a recording and performing Jazz artist
over the last five years. Each of his three recordings for the prestigious
Blue Note label was nominated for a Grammy Award. His most recent
release, entitled "This Time It's Love," quickly rose
to #1 on Jazz radio. Beginning in 1995, with the self-produced "Close
Your Eyes," Mr. Elling has been touring extensively in the
U.S. and has performed to critical acclaim in Canada, Israel, Japan,
Australia and throughout most of Europe. Highlights have included
a slot opening for Herbie Hancock in France, JVC Jazz Festival performances
in Carnegie Hall and New York's Bryant Park, and rarely offered
consecutive engagements at the Montreaux Festval in Switzerland.
With his second recording, "The Messenger," Mr. Elling
furthered his reputation (along with that of collaborator Laurence
Hobgood) as a producer, arranger, and composer. In addition to a
second Grammy nomination, "The Messenger" also won the
Prix Billie Holiday from the Academic du Jazz in Paris and Jazz
Record of the Year at the Chicago Music Awards.
Mr. Elling has been featured in profiles for "CBS Sunday Morning,"
"Showbiz Today" on CNN, and in hundreds of newspaper and
magazine reviews and articles. The New York Times called him "hugely
talented" (Jun/96) and called his shows at Birdland "good,
battering entertainment." (Jan/96) Playboy Magazine has named
Elling "the male Jazz vocalist of the Nineties." (Oct/98)
Famously hard to please, band leader Artie Show called Elling "possibly
the most innovative and orginal Jazz singer to come along in years."
Elling has won the annual JazzTimes Readers Poll (#1 Male Jazz Vocalist),
and the Downbeat Critics Poll (Talent Deserving Wider Recognition)
for the third year in a row.
Elling has also gone beyond Jazz performance to write and direct
more broadly based literary and artistic events, most notably in
works commissioned by Chicago's famous Steppenwolf Theater. In 1998
he undertook a critical exploration of the life and work of Beat
poet Allen Ginsberg. In reviewing the show, The Chicago Tribune
called it "audacious" and "provocative…Elling's
[treatment] turned a fairly predictable survey of Beat Literaturn
into a more balanced view of a key chapter in American history.
Here was an evening of poetry and music informed by a sense of morality,
as well as an aversion to politically correct points of view."
(Jan/98) Further plans for this production include the presentation
of an expanded version at the Kennedy Center in the fall of 1999.
Mr. Elling was commissioned one year later to create an event fusing
Jazz and modern dance, this time featuring his wife, professional
dancer, Jennifer Elling. Again Elling was praised as an innovator.
The Chicago Sun-Times wrote that, "Having risen as a Jazz singer
on the wings of modern poetry, including his own, [Elling] is in
full thrall of art's interactive possibilities." (Feb/99) The
Chicago Tribune agreed, proclaiming, "Because spoken word,
subtle lighting design, fluid stage direction and a heady spirit
of improvisation all play key roles, the evening touches on more
aesthetic forms than one generally encounters in a week's worth
of concertgoing…So many of those vignettes prove eloquent -
with the crisp imagery of Elling's lyrics enhanced by the abstract,
poetic motion of the dancers - that it's difficult to single out
highlights." (Feb/99)
www.kurtelling.com
/ www.jaesinnett.com
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