KURT ELLING
Man In the Air
Blue
Note
Read
the Jazzitude review of Kurt Elling/Nightmoves
There are two schools of thought on Kurt Elling.
Both sides tend to agree that Elling is a talented interpreter
of songs in the jazz style, and that he possesses a certain
skill when it comes to scat and to vocalese. One side, however,
laments Elling’s affinity for beat poetry, his über-hipster
image, and his vocalese rants, which are often peppered
with spiritual and philosophical themes carried over from
his time in divinity school. The other side finds precisely
these features of Elling’s work most fascinating and
worthy of praise, and declares him the best and most talented
male jazz singer working today. On his last Blue Note album,
Flirting with Twilight, the singer put aside these
elements and delivered a fairly straightforward recording
of ballad standards. That album was widely praised as a
step forward for Elling, heralding a new maturity in his
work. Elling’s newest release, Man In the Air,
is directed toward the group of listeners who adore his
lyrical flights of fancy, beat hipster poetry, and high
flying ideas.
Man In the Air highlights Elling’s
skills as a lyricist, as he offers lyrics to a number of
his favorite jazz compositions, many of them contemporary.
There are some virtuoso performances, but there are also
some remarkably gorgeous and emotionally charged lyrics
to compositions by Pat Metheny, Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock,
and Courtney Pine. Themes that emerge in Elling’s
lyrics include love, loss, the power of the human spirit,
and the spark of the divine. For example, his lyrics to
Pat Metheny’s 6/8 romp “Minuano” are about
meeting a new love interest, quite possibly the love of
one’s life, but they are much more than romantic love
poetry, emphasizing the divine nature of love, and the recognition
of the divine in another. “Already been as high
as Kathmandu/Willing to go as far as Timuktu/Nowhere’s
too far away/I may catch up with you today/maybe today we’ll
make our getaway” he sings, double tracking his
voice on the second repetition of the chorus, and you can
feel yourself soaring up there with him. Brad Wheeler keeps
the listener up there with a gorgeous solo, bolstered by
Paul Wertico’s chattering rim accents and Laurence
Hobgood’s powerful, blocky chords. Similarly, on “Higher
Vibe” there’s a sense of spiritual optimism
that carries over into the lyrics and the enthusiasm in
Elling’s vocal delivery.
Grover
Washington, Jr.’s recording of “Winelight”
is a smooth jazz classic, but it brimmed with Washington’s
R&B influence as well. Elling’s version emphasizes
the melodic beauty of the song, while his rhythm section
digs in and offers a somewhat earthier backing. It’s
a strong performance, and one that will surely please those
who’ve loved the song since Washington recorded it.
Another well-known modern jazz track that Elling tackles
is Joe Zawinul’s “A Remark You Made.”
Recast here as “Time To Say Goodbye,” the song
is about the breakup of a relationship and that moment of
saying goodbye. Even in its instrumental version, originally
heard on the group’s Heavy Weather album,
the song’s slow tempo and aching melody gave it a
melancholy air, but Elling takes it to a new place, with
Stefon Harris perfectly complementing the mood of the piece.
Though the piece is sad, it is tempered by hope and by the
realization that love is never truly left behind.
Other songs offer simpler pleasures: a blues
by Elling entitled “The More I Have You” provides
an opportunity for Elling to go off on one of his scat excursions;
Bob Mintzer’s song “All Is Quiet,” which
was also performed by Elling on the Yellowjackets’
Club Nocturne, and The Association hit song “Never
My Love,” a piece of pop fluff that is given greater
depth and dignity by Elling. Once having decided a composition
is worthy of his attention, Elling never condescends to
the material, as is clear from both “Never My Love”
and the humorous “Uncertainty of the Poet,”
originally performed by vocal group Chanticleer.
The key to the album, however, lies in its
title track, an original composition by Elling and his pianist
and longtime collaborator Laurence Hobgood, and Elling’s
masterful vocalese on “Resolution,” the second
section of John Coltrane’s suite “A Love Supreme.”
Elling first offers an invocation to the many faces of God,
approximating beautifully the full, open sound of Trane’s
tenor. Invoking Muhammed, Jesus, Vishnu, and other deities,
Elling then goes on to relate the visions of a priest and
another observer standing at the edge of the universe and
watching the river of time swirl past. The priest pronounces,
as he sees the place in the universe where everything comes
to its end: “I know about birth/I know about death,
and how the light goes out of men/- the life departing –
powerless/giving it up - but in the vast indifference/I
invent a deeper meaning/I'm the one who will say 'use the
will every day or go mad trying - go to war against the
impotent side of living.’” That is certainly
the most human of views of life, and is a brilliant declaration
of the power and strength of the human spirit. It’s
a real virtuoso performance, and one that will delight those
who enjoy Elling’s surreal flights of lyrical fancy.
It’s interesting, too, since Coltrane himself composed
the final section of his suite around the words of a prayer
he wrote, using his horn rather than voice to speak the
words.
The album’s title track turns out to
be about Wayne Shorter, although Elling originally thought,
as he worked on the lyrics to Hobgood’s music, that
he might be writing about a guru or about physicist Stephen
Hawking. “The man up in the air - has a vision
of everywhere/Recollected - and finally connected/And harmonized.”
Shorter is certainly a touchstone for most modern jazz artists,
and especially for composers, which is the role that Elling
has taken on with this CD. There will be those who will
wish that Elling would stick to skillful interpretations
of standard material, but they miss the point. Kurt Elling
is one of our best jazz singers, to be sure, but he is more
than that, a fitting successor to the likes of Jon Hendricks.
There may not be a large number of male singers plumbing
the jazz vocal tradition and writing vocalese, but as long
as we’ve got Kurt Elling, we don’t have to worry
about the tradition—it’s in great hands.
