Concert review: Kurt Elling at the Dakota, first night, both sets

Kurt Elling

Who: Kurt Elling, voice;  Laurence Hobgood, piano; Harish Raghavan, bass; Ulysses Owens Jr., drums; John McLean, guitar • Where: Dakota • When: Wednesday, February 9, 2011

A blow-by-blow for Kurt Elling fans and others who plan to catch the band on their latest tour. (By “others,” I mean those who haven’t yet seen Elling live, because once you do, you’re a fan.) This tour is mostly about The Gate, the new CD produced by Don Was and the successor to Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman, for which Elling won his long-overdue first Grammy in 2010. But it’s not just about The Gate. Here are the setlists and remarks along the way.

FIRST SET

“Moonlight Serenade” (from Flirting with Twilight, 2001). Elling wrote the lyrics to the version of the Glenn Miller/Mitchell Parish song recorded by Charlie Haden and Quartet West on Haunted Heart (1991). A romantic showcase for his voice, which only gets better. Everyone in the house feels all warm and cozy at the end, when suddenly he turns around, snaps his fingers, and the band moves immediately into…

CD review: Kurt Elling's "The Gate": From King Crimson to amen

Kurt Elling by Timothy Saccenti

The successor to a Grammy winner is eagerly awaited, then examined under a high-powered microscope. Will it be as good? Will it be better? Will it be a letdown? 

Fans of jazz singer Kurt Elling who have waited a year and a half for the follow-up to 2009’s Dedicated to You, his Grammy-winning tribute to/reinterpretation of the John Coltrane/Johnny Hartman classic, will be thrilled by The Gate. Listeners new to Elling (and to pianist/arranger Laurence Hobgood, Elling’s longtime collaborator) will want to catch up on earlier albums. 

Among male jazz singers today, right now, Elling stands alone. He simply has the most exceptional voice out there. Famously spanning four octaves, resonant and warm, it mostly lives in baritone land but can rise to a dazzling falsetto. He’s a master of dynamics and phrasing, texture and tone, and his swing seems effortless, like breathing. One moment he can woo you with a tender ballad, the next astonish you with rapid-fire, acrobatic scatting. He’s a romantic and a hipster, sincere and playful, authentically charismatic. He writes his own vocalese lyrics, many of which are pure poetry. 

It seems there’s nothing he can’t do, and if he’s increasingly being mentioned in the same breath as Frank Sinatra and Mel Torme and Louis Armstrong, it’s because he deserves it.

On the road again: Kurt Elling and Laurence Hobgood in Fargo: Concert review

Last week (Saturday, October 10): Kurt in St. Peter, MN. This week (Saturday, October 17): Kurt in Fargo, ND.

I have friends who follow U2 from city to city and believe me, jazz is cheaper.

This was a totally different concert from the one at Gustavus Adolphus College. From St. Peter to Fargo, there was not one crossover tune. Two possible reasons: This time, Kurt and Laurence performed with the Jazz Arts Big Band instead of their own quartet. And they don't repeat themselves.

How often have we all heard artists on tour for a new CD play the same sets multiple times? Dedicated to You is still new (although Elling and Hobgood are already well into planning their next recording with Concord), and while Elling mentioned DTY and the fact that it would be available for sale in the lobby after the show, they are not playing that show everywhere they go. (Though they are playing it on their European tour, which begins October 24 in Cork, Ireland.) Selected songs are being incorporated into the vast and expanding Elling-Hobgood repertoire.



Playing with a big band can’t be as spontaneous as playing with a quartet. There are charts to be learned ahead of time. When Elling told the Gustavus crowd that the quartet would be performing some tunes from DTY, some requests, and “some things I haven’t thought of yet,” I took that to mean the set list was not carved in stone and they would go at least in part where the spirit of the performance and the house moved them. But with a big band, even the encore is decided and rehearsed in advance.

I wonder if the sets they played on stage in Fargo were the same as they played earlier that day, during their one and only rehearsal with the band. We were given a printed program with titles prefaced by “Program to be selected from the following.” Over two sets, they played most but not all of the songs listed, swapping “Man in the Air” for “Say It (Over and Over Again)” and changing the order significantly. I didn’t see any of the musicians madly shuffling charts on their stands, but perhaps Elling decided the order of the program as the evening went along? That would be interesting to know.

A bit about the Jazz Arts Big Band: Founded in 1991, the 17-member band is made up of professional musicians/jazz educators from the Fargo-Moorhead area. A nonprofit organization, it has a board and depends on grants, sponsors, and individual supporters—just like Minnesota's JazzMN Big Band which, I learned later from Jazz Arts Group executive director Rochelle Roesler, was modeled on the Jazz Arts band. (JAG is the umbrella group that brought Elling to town. This is its 19th season. Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon will perform in February. Past guest artists have included Conrad Herwig and Freddy Cole. JAG also has an educational mission; Elling gave a class on Friday for students that was also open to the public. Twin Cities-based vocalist Nancy Harms went to Fargo a day early so she could attend the class.)



I’ve seen Elling with a big band only once before, at an International Association for Jazz Educators conference in NYC. (RIP, IAJE: Roesler saw Elling at the final conference in Toronto, and that’s when she decided she had to bring him to Fargo.) I saw him with the Bob Mintzer Big Band, a Grammy-winning organization led by jazz great (and Yellowjacket) Mintzer. The Jazz Arts band is not the Mintzer band, but it’s a good band and it was up for what Elling wanted it to do. Elling made his wants very clear, turning often to conduct the band and push it harder. I’m not sure how musical director Dr. Kyle Mack felt about that and I didn’t get a chance to ask him, but he was certainly gracious about it. (Writing for Fargo-Moorhead’s INFORUM website, John Lamb noted that Elling’s “takeover wasn’t hostile, but it was forceful.”)

The band opened the program with two upbeat tunes: “I Be Serious ’Bout Dem Blues,” a chart by bassist John Clayton, and “Another One of Those Things” a take-off on “Just One of Those Things” by composer John Mahoney. Mack introduced Elling by telling a story about an Arts Midwest master class he had attended several years ago, during which Elling had made a nervous young student feel at ease by asking him to stay after class for a private lesson. Then Elling and Hobgood came out, and those in the audience who were studying their programs and thinking they were about to hear the relatively mellow “Close Your Eyes” were in for a surprise.

Elling was in full bring-down-the-house Sinatra mode for “Luck Be a Lady,” turning to the band and punching the air whenever he wanted a blare from the horns. He got it. He wanted the band to swing hard right now, and he got that, too. The band might have started the evening a bit tentatively (okay, not might have, did), but by the end of the night they were breathing fire.

Everything seemed a bit overamped all evening long. Many of the subtleties usually present in an Elling show were lost. But this was about rousing a crowd that seemed even more reserved than Minnesotans, and more hesitant to show their enthusiasm. Solos (by the band and the guests) weren’t rewarded as often as they should have been.

Next: Mintzer’s arrangement of “My One and Only Love.” (Hear it on Mintzer’s Old School: New Lessons. It's also on DTY in a new arrangement by Hobgood.) Elling stepped aside to let the spotlight fall on the band's guitarist, Tom Carvell. Then, prefaced by Elling as “a little Basie action where the band gets all greasy”: “Goin’ to Chicago Blues,” with lyrics by Jon Hendricks. On this tune, Elling growled and roared. Jaws dropped. He could take this show to Vegas.



The first set ended big with Coltrane’s “Resolution,” featuring Elling’s lyrics and Mintzer’s chart. Elling and the band took it over the top. But first Elling told the story behind his version, which I had not heard before. “Mrs. Coltrane [Alice] did not cotton to people writing lyrics to her husband’s music,” he explained. He sent her a tape and heard back: “The first word is ‘God’ and I like that and that’s right, so he can record this—but no more from anybody.”

After the break, the second set began with two more tunes by the band: Lee Konitz’s “Subconscious-Lee,” arranged by David Springfield, and Horace Silver’s delightful “Filthy McNasty,” arranged by John La Barbera. This time, when Elling and Hobgood stepped on stage, they started with “Close Your Eyes” in a big band arrangement by Shelly Berg which Elling recorded earlier with the USC Thornton Jazz Orchestra. (You can find on iTunes if you’re so inclined. Search for USC Thornton Jazz Orchestra).

The band sat out for the next tune, the tender and beautiful “Say It (Over and Over Again)” from DTY (and also on Hobgood’s “Left to My Own Devices,” in a version for solo piano). Elling began by telling the crowd that Hobgood’s arrangement on DTY was for jazz quartet, saxophonist Ernie Watts, and string quartet (ETHEL), but “any night I have Laurence Hobgood with me, I have an instant ten-fingered orchestra.” This was the evening’s most romantic moment, a wonderful performance by a master of the love song and his elegant, intuitive, expressive collaborator. The crowd—about 400 people, not a full house but a good house, split among chairs on the main level and sofas/cocktail-style tables on the mezzanine—was rapt.



Before the closer, Elling took time to praise the band and introduce each member by name, “these handsome men, because everybody has a mother and they all want to hear their little boys’ names.” He reminded us that CDs were available in the lobby, each “a fitting coaster for anyone who likes a drink,” pointed us toward his website with the words “it’s costing me a fortune; it costs you nothing,” and said that his next CD—with John Patitucci on bass and Peter Erskine on drums (!!!)—will probably be out in the spring of 2010. Then the great, colorful story-song “Nature Boy.” If you want to see Kurt sing it with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, here’s a video.

The encore, during which Elling conducted the band: “My Foolish Heart.” Two full, varied, enjoyable sets had come to an end.

But the night wasn’t over. Roesler kindly invited us to a reception at The Wine Bar, a small café in a strip mall where we had some lovely Penfold shiraz and I had the chance to talk with Dr. Matthew Patnode, a saxophonist with the big band (who told me how it works—thanks for that, Dr. P.), and with Hobgood, who was seated across the table from me.

Having read Hobgood’s postings on Elling’s website (the Forum section), I always thought he would be interesting to talk with, and he was. Topics ranged from the upcoming Jazz at Lincoln Center concert with Richard Galliano (Friday–Saturday, May 14–15, 2010), a meeting with Galliano in Paris (where the accordionist is a superstar), Turkish music, world music, the Dakota jazz club in Minneapolis, life in Chicago, life in New York, the Green Mill in Chicago, Hobgood's friend Patricia Barber (he calls her Patty), the piano he recently played at a concert in Des Moines, shopping for silk shirts in Los Angeles, the prospect of composing for string quartet, listening to Shostakovich’s string quartets (numbers 4 and 6, if I remember correctly), the next Elling CD and how amazing it will be with Patitucci and Erskine, Hobgood’s recent one-night engagement at Small’s (you can listen to both sets online), and more.



Meanwhile HH, seated at my right, was talking with Elling, who was seated at his right, about photography and music and Monterey and the Iron Chef television program (this being a bar, the TVs were on). I asked Elling if he cooked. He doesn't.

The wine was passed, glasses were filled, glasses were emptied, and we ordered more.

Photos by John Whiting.

Kurt Elling Quartet at Gustavus Adolphus College: Worth the drive

Kurt and his collaborator

Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota is about an hour’s drive from Minneapolis, a bit longer if you stick to speed limits. It’s also Kurt Elling’s alma mater (class of 1989), and last night (Oct. 10) he returned for homecoming and a concert at Bjorling Recital Hall, where he first performed jazz before a live audience.

How many times have I heard Elling sing? I’ve lost count—maybe 20? And I’m not through yet. He’s always evolving, pushing himself, changing, going in new directions, taking risks, trying new things. I’ve never once seen him just go through the motions. He just gets better, more subtle and more powerful, commanding the stage and holding the audience. His voice is a Stradivarius, improving with the years. He must work very, very hard.

As I drive to Saint Peter with a friend, we wonder—will we hear the Dedicated to You show again? (Elling has been on tour with that in support of his latest CD on Concord, his take on the iconic Johnny Hartman-John Coltrane sessions—not a replication, an interpretation, with wonderful arrangements by Laurence Hobgood.) I’ve seen it in Monterey and in Minneapolis, and I think—if he wants to do it again, that’s fine.

He doesn’t. He cherry-picks songs from it (as he has done with his project with Fred Hersch, Leaves of Grass) but this is a whole new show as far as I can tell, full of favorites and songs not yet recorded but promised for his next Concord release.

Maybe because he’s back home at Gustavus (of which he always speaks fondly), maybe because Bjorling is such an intimate and inviting space (lined in wood, it seats just 475, and the acoustics are pin-drop perfect), maybe because he’s playing to at least a partly college crowd, Elling seems especially loose, relaxed, and anything-goes. He dances and glides across the stage, makes jokes, and addresses the audience throughout the performance. He’s warmer and more playful than I’ve ever seen him in a club setting, except perhaps at Birdland.

The night begins with a sweet, funny moment. Laurence, drummer Ulysses Owens, and Nigerian-British bass player Michael Olatuja come out through a door at stage left, take their places, and wait. Will they play an instrumental crowd-warmer? No, they just wait. The audience is absolutely still. Then Elling opens the door, which gives a loud crick crick. In pin-drop acoustics. Note to Gustavus: WD-40.

Song by song, here’s what happens next.

1. “Autumn Nocturne,” entirely a cappella. Elling’s voice sounds as if he has spent the last several hours warming up. This nostalgic, achy tune is a perfect start to a concert in a state that just last night had its first dusting of snow.

2. “My Foolish Heart,” with trio. The version that includes the poem by Sufi saint Rabia of Basra (“The moon was once a moth who ran to God…”). This seems to be Elling’s preferred version now; it’s the only one I’ve heard him sing live. There’s another, with a poem by St. John of the Cross, on Live in Chicago (1999). He ends on a high note that lasts and lasts and slowly fades and no one breathes until it’s over.

3. Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out.” Seriously swinging. Forget the original pop song smoothie. It’s a jazz song now. I’ve read about Elling performing this song but have never heard it until now. Hoping it will be on the new CD.

Break: Elling talks about how much he loves the fall, the “magnificent everything season…. Summer is like finishing up the year for me.” Then tells us a bit about Dedicated to You, how the band recorded it live (at the Allen Room in Jazz at Lincoln Center) and had “one take to get it right…I’m pretty happy with much of it.” He promises to sing “some from that, some requests, and some things I haven’t thought of yet.”

4. “Dedicated to You,” a measured, velvety ballad on the original Coltrane/Hartman album, is a whole new song with Hobgood’s spirited arrangement—there’s bounce to it. Still beautiful but more modern. Hobgood is a genius.


Ulysses Owens

5. Working title: “Kabuki Cowboy.” Elling’s description: “A Marc Johnson lick with a lyric I’ve written.” A work in progress, and I’m glad I’m here to see/hear it. To me, this kind of experience is the whole reason to see jazz live. It's a surprise, a delight, a tour-de-force, a high-wire act.

It starts with teasing back-and-forth between Elling and drummer Owens. Elling scats a rhythm, Owens repeats and elaborates. Again. Fun to watch and hear. You can tell Owens doesn’t know exactly what Elling will do next—he’s a hitter on the mound, swinging at pitches. Then Olatuja joins in, and Hobgood, playing the piano like a kora (thanks for that insight, Janis), one hand holding down strings inside so the sound is more plucked than struck.

The lyrics are wild, plentiful, far-fetched, and colorful--almost stream-of-consciousness. Something about “a little man riding around in a space capsule deep inside my head,” about “digging everything in life” and “thinking all the time.” Hip, chatty, cool. I would have taken more notes but I was listening too hard. New CD, please.


Kurt with Michael Olatuja

6. “You Are Too Beautiful” from Dedicated to You. A complete change of mood/direction that makes perfect sense. Elling introduces it by saying “By osmosis, you know this song, even if you don’t know this song.” A showcase for his amazing voice, its range and depth and resonance.

7. “Late Night Willie.” Hobgood plays a gospel groove and we’re off on another adventure—to me, the centerpiece of the entire night. Is this Elling’s take on the Keith Jarrett tune by the same name? I don’t know and can’t say but I’m guessing it is.

It starts with a story that seems customized for this crowd: about being in college, discovering yourself, finding out if you’re a late-night person or an early person. “Your perception will alter radically if you stay awake for 24 hours at a time…. You’ll find your sleep cycle has made you misperceive reality…. You’ll feel different about the day when you’ve already lived through one and you’re still up. You’ll wonder, ‘What will happen if I stay up for two days?’” There’s a very funny bit about being at a party, deciding to leave early, feeling someone pulling on the back of your coat (here Elling pulls on the back of his own suit jacket and poses as if surprised), and discovering it’s the devil disguised as your friend, who talks you into staying.


Kurt gets down

Throughout, the amazing Hobgood is right there with Elling. His piano accompaniment--intuitive, witty and wry--turns a monologue into a dialogue, a layered conversation. Fascinating to see and hear.

Then Elling launches into reams of lyrics, heaps of lyrics, singing fast. Playful, smart stuff, the total opposite in mood, style, and intensity of the Hartman/Coltrane project. A phrase I loved and managed to scribble: “Unless you’re Miles Davis, there’s always some brother, some other smoother than you.”

Elling steps aside and Hobgood takes it away and I will forever regret not making a clandestine recording of what happens next (which I would never do, but I’m just saying): a solo that strides across the musical landscape like Colossus, from gospel to blues to jazz to classical, thick chords and whispered single notes and glittering ornaments. The ending is delicious, so beautiful and romantic, and the drums and bass return and Elling steps forward and it’s a satiny segue into…

8. “Stairway to the Stars.” I’m still puzzling over how “Late Night Willie” turned into Rachmaninov. But I’m happy to hear this lovely song, which Elling sings on Hobgood’s latest CD, When the Heart Dances (2009). That is definitely worth checking out BTW; Hobgood’s playing throughout is gorgeous, and his bassist is not too shabby: Charlie Haden. I especially love the first tune, “Que Sera Sera.”

Break: Elling introduces the band: young Juilliard grad Owens, who’s “elbowing his way onto the New York music scene in all the right ways,” bassist Olatuja, “on loan from Terence Blanchard for the weekend.” He saves his most profound thanks for Hobgood: “my great collaborator and friend of more than 16 years…he makes so much of what we do possible…his arrangements and improvisational skills…he’s half of the success we have.”

9. Pure scat singing. Is it Monk’s “Well You Needn’t”? I think so, but only because (thanks to Carmen McRae’s Carmen Sings Monk) I can sense words behind the scatting. Maybe Elling’s version is built on it, or draws from it, or…who cares.

This is the official last tune of the evening, after which the band will return for an encore. But as I listen to Elling scat Monk (or whatever), I’m thinking as I always do when I hear him live that no one singing today can touch him. The awards (Best Male Vocalist multiple times), the heaps of praise (“standout male jazz vocalist of our time”—New York Times; “may be the greatest male jazz singer of all times”—Jazz Review), the awestruck reviews (yes, this is yet another one) are not fluff or hyperbole but simple fact. What a satisfying evening this has been in every way.

The encore:

10. Hobgood’s “Motherland.” Just Elling and Hobgood on stage in a comment on the times, a plea for unity and change: “Look around/tell me what you see/it isn’t what it’s supposed to be.” Moving and inspiring.

Afterward, Elling greets friends and former classmates in the lobby, and Hobgood signs copies of his new CD. Mine, unfortunately, is in the car.

Worth the drive to Saint Peter—to, in daylight, past leaves of red and gold; from, in darkness, a long, lonely stretch of highway on the Minnesota plains? No question.

Worth the drive to Fargo, North Dakota, next weekend (Oct. 17) to see Elling and Hobgood with the Jazz Arts Big Band? Some people think so. Here’s a link. Tickets still available. Twenty bucks.


Laurence's blue shoes. The back of his jacket
was embroidered in red.

Kurt Elling on the Internets

Kurt Elling's new CD, Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman, is at the top of the JazzWeek airplay chart for July 6. I finally bought my copy today from the Electric Fetus, my LRS.

I had been resisting the siren songs of iTunes and Amazon ("click me!") ever since the CD came out on June 23 because I wanted to drive to the Fetus, park in the lot, walk through the security pylons, pass the cards and T-shirts and soaps and stationery and Kangol hats, continue through the music that actually sells all the way to the north end of the store, take a sharp right and end up at the Jazz and Classical New Releases bin—the destination farthest from the door, unless you count the basement.

Kurt was there, of course, and a few more temptations: Farmers by Nature featuring Gerald Cleaver, William Parker, and Craig Taborn, recorded at Stone; the Chris Morrissey Quartet's The Morning World; Fly's Sky & Country with Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier, and Jeff Ballard; and Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Book One, which I want to hear before Mayfield comes to town to play with the Minnesota Orchestra later this month.

On the way home, I heard "All or Nothing at All" from Dedicated to You on KBEM.

In mid-June, Ted Panken, that lucky dog, had a lengthy, leisurely, wide-ranging, far-reaching conversation with Elling about all sorts of things (including music, Chicago, God, poetry, the soul, Sinatra, Kerouac, KE's college days, New York, jazz, and Johnny Hartman). The interview is now up on jazz.com. Interesting and worthwhile reading for anyone who enjoys KE and his music.

On the same day Panken's interview was posted, NPR featured "Lush Life" from Dedicated to You as its Song of the Day. Great pick but I wonder how well writer Marc Silver knows KE's music. Silver writes, in part: "Kurt Elling has a lot of gumption. On Dedicated to You, his new CD, he sings the songs of Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane, including the utterly iconic 'Lush Life'--which has been performed by not only Coltrane, but also Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, Nat King Cole and even Donna Summers.... Elling doesn't seem intimidated by the song's stature."

Why should he be intimidated? He can sing whatever he pleases, and he has pretty much from the start. One of the many things I enjoy about his live performances is the fact that he takes chances. He never phones it in. He's the Philippe Petit of jazz singers, jumping up and down on a high wire. I've thought that since I first heard him sing at the old Dakota many years ago. And again when I came across his recording of "Tanganyika Dance," his interpretation of the McCoy Tyner tune "Man from Tanganyika," for which KE wrote his own lyrics and which he recorded in 1994, when he was 27 years old, before his first CD as a leader (Close Your Eyes, 1995). Track that down and listen (it's on Bob Belden's Shades of Blue) and see if you think it sounds like someone who's risk-averse.

Some relevant quotes from Panken's interview:

About Dedicated to You:
KE: "It's a very different experience for me just to sing these tunes as opposed to, 'Let's stretch out, and I'll do this gigantic, obnoxious, vocalese thing.' For once, why don't we just bite off as much as we can chew, as opposed to more than we can chew?"

In response to Panken's question about whether the John Coltrane-Johnny Hartman record was important to him in his formative years--something he would have done it if hadn't been proposed to him:
KE: "I wouldn't have thought of it.... I wouldn't have thought to touch on any other than maybe to consider taking Speak No Evil and trying to write a lyric for all of it."
Panken: "That would be a very different proposition."
KE: "That would be a very different proposition. That's the way my head naturally goes, though. 'Let me bite off this gigantic piece that I can't actually do.'"

I wonder what KE has planned for his "Passion World" performance at the Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center next May. He's sharing a bill with French jazz accordionist Richard Galliano. And Laurence Hobgood, of course.

Kurt Elling and Nancy King at the Allen Room: Concert review

When: 2/15/08
Where: Jazz at Lincoln Center, Allen Room
Who: Kurt Elling (vocals), Nancy King (vocals), Laurence Hobgood (piano), Rob Amster (bass), Greg Hutchinson (drums)

This concert is the real reason we’re in New York. That it falls on Valentine’s Day weekend is a happy accident. I’ve been a Kurt Elling fan since I first heard him sing at the old Dakota in Bandana Square, whenever that was. Over the years, I’ve seen him in Minneapolis, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, the IAJE stage in New York, the Monterey Jazz Festival, and Birdland. Tonight’s show is in the elegant Allen Room, part of the Jazz at Lincoln Center complex.

We’re at the 9:30 p.m. set, so it’s dark outside and the city lights shine through the wall of glass behind the stage. (The wall measures 90' wide x 50' high and tilts out.) The traffic along Central Park South is a slow lava flow. We’re sitting in the second row to the left of the stage and can see people moving around their homes in the high-rise buildings across the way.

Nancy King shares the bill, but Kurt comes out alone with his band to open with “Beware My Foolish Heart.” I love this song, and I love how he sings it, but I don’t love the particular verse he adds.

Elling arcanum: He has used two different verses in this song. On the Live in Chicago CD (1999), he sings his version of “The Dark Night,” a poem by 16th-century Christian mystic St. John of the Cross. Elling’s lyrics: “One dark night/Fired with love’s urgent longings/Clothed in sheer grace/I went out unseen…to where she waited for me….” He turns a passionate poem about a soul seeking union with God into a passionate poem about a man seeking union with his lover. Not much of a stretch and it works.

Tonight he sings his version of “The Moon Was Once a Moth,” a poem by 8th century Sufi saint Rabia of Basra. From what I can tell, Elling expands on the original (about a moth who runs to God, they embrace, she dies, and “now just her luminous soul remains”). In Elling’s version, “they embraced and she passed into death/with ecstasy dissolving her body in a thousand signing smiles/her limbs fell softly to earth to sanctify the night meadows….” I can’t get past the self-immolating moth and the little legs drifting down. To me, it’s a big ewwww.

Musically, it’s gorgeous: just Elling and his collaborator Hobgood on piano, so beautiful, with Elling ending the moth tale (“and again/and again/and again”) on a high note that won’t let go, then it’s back to “Beware My Foolish Heart” and the bass and drums return. Afterward, Elling quips “Thank you, good night!”

Next up: “Change Partners,” with a solo by Amster. Then Betty Carter’s “Tight,” which Elling begins by finger-snapping the rhythm for drummer Hutchinson, who starts off on brushes. This is my first time seeing Hutchinson. Elling changes drummers. It seemed for a time that Willie Jones would be the fourth member of the quartet, but Elling’s Web site names Kobie Watkins as drummer, and we saw Hutchinson, so who knows? (BTW, tonight Jones is performing with Ernestine Anderson at the Iridium.)

On “Tight,” Elling scats, something I’ve been waiting for. He’s a bit more hammy tonight than other times I’ve seen him. Maybe it’s the occasion, maybe the venue, maybe the crowd.

Afterward, Nancy King enters on her new hip and a cane. Their first song, “What’s New,” is a perfect segue into the rest of the evening, a mutual admiration society of two powerful singers. Their scatting is playful stream-of-consciousness, blending in bits from other songs (“In this world of overrated pleasures and underrated treasures, I’m glad there is you….” “You are too beautiful and I’m a fool for beauty”).

Elling steps back, leaving King and Hobgood alone for a ballad, “La Valse des Lilas (Once Upon a Summertime),” with English lyrics by Johnny Mercer (“Once upon a summertime/if you recall/we stopped beside a little flower stall/A bunch of bright forget-me-nots was all I’d let you buy me”). Wistful and delicate.

King is an expressive, emotional singer, and we should all be ashamed of ourselves for not buying every one of her CDs (now hard to find) and traveling to her home town of Portland to hear her sing. King decided “to do singing for my life” at age 14, after hearing Ella Fitzgerald scat at a 1954 concert. She has turned down lucrative contracts that stipulate no scatting. When you hear King scat, it’s evident this is her natural language, as effortless as breath.

Next, Monk’s “Misterioso,” vocalese version, with Elling and King trading syllables, backed only by Amster on bass. Their voices are perfect together, and Amster’s accompaniment is flawless. After, Elling says, “And that’s why I’ve kept him in the band for 13 years.”

Elling follows with his own lyric to Dexter Gordon’s “Where Are You,” a song he introduces as a “torn Valentine” (“Where is your heart, my love?…. I need you baby, but darling where, baby, where are you?”) Hobgood plays an exquisite solo. While Elling’s name is the reason I buy tickets (and hop on planes), Hobgood is every bit as good, an intelligent and eloquent performer. I’ve read several writers who bemoan the fact that he isn’t better known on his own merits. When you see Elling and Hobgood together, it’s clear that this partnership is greater than the sum of its parts. Any time a group includes a singer, the singer takes the spotlight, something Hobgood seems to accept without feeling diminished.

The penultimate song of the evening: “Nature Boy.” This is mostly Elling’s tune; King contributes a few side notes. Because the show is nearing the end (a bit too soon for me and the $61.50 per ticket price), Hutchinson takes a lengthy solo. It’s over, everyone exits the stage, then returns for a “Stardust” encore.

It’s been an evening of standards, of Elling’s resonant mahogany and King’s rich cherry wood. Earlier, Elling told us that he’ll travel to Portland next week to perform with King there. Is a recording in their future? We can hope.

Photos: Jazz at Lincoln Center does not allow photos, not even snaps of the view out the window once the show is over and the artists are gone. Geez, lighten up, this isn't the Federal Reserve. Luckily Elling wore the same suit when he performed at the Dakota in March 2007, when this photo was taken. King sang at the Jazz Standard in January 2007. Here she is with bassist Reuben Rogers.

See a view of the Allen Room here. For the Elling/King concert, seats filled the room.