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.