The Questions (Live) Kurt Elling

• 1 A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall (Live) 12:01
• 2 Intro: A Happy Thought (Live) 02:37
• 3 A Happy Thought (Live) 04:25
• 4 Intro: I Have Dreamed (Live) 01:12
• 5 I Have Dreamed (Live) 06:32
• 6 Intro: Every Day You're Away (Live) 02:18
• 7 Every Day You're Away (Live) 08:08
• 8 Intro: Endless Lawns (Live) 01:13
• 9 Endless Lawns (Live) 10:49
• Total Runtime 49:15

Info zu The Questions (Live)

With the release of his GRAMMY® Award-nominated album The Questions earlier this year, Kurt Ellingresponded to our tumultuous times with a wide-ranging set of music that explored some of humanity’s most timely and timeless struggles. Drawing upon material from jazz standards and American Songbook favorites to contemporary classics by influential songwriters like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, Elling meditated on the political and the existential, the spiritual and the global.

The Questions, with its soulful melodicism, profound urgency and vigorous swing, earned Elling and his band widespread acclaim, culminating in the singer’s 13th career GRAMMY® Award-nomination. Most importantly, it engaged audiences around the world in the most vital challenges of this staggering historical moment. Now, The Questions LIVE captures that experience through an intimate, compelling performance recorded during the band’s most recent European tour.

A special gift from Elling to his fans, The Questions LIVE arrives just in time for the holidays, a time for families and friends to gather together and celebrate the communal spirit of the season. That spirit comes vividly to life as Elling convenes an intimate London crowd for a short set featuring expanded versions of four songs from The Questions as well as a new piece based on Ben Webster’s bristling “Did You Call Her Today.”

“I’m hoping to not only address this moment of craziness in the world, but also to lift people up about it,” Elling explains. “I’m not a protest singer, though there’s a lot to protest. It’s tough for me to sing from anger, though there’s a lot to be angry about.”

The Questions LIVE opens, as did the original album, with Elling a cappella, reciting the stirring opening lines of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” As he relates to the audience afterwards, the song’s litany of poetic horrors feels “as current as it was when it was written.” He goes on to introduce the “hard-won wisdom” of poet Franz Wright, whose words were set to music by pianist Stu Mindeman for the philosophical “A Happy Thought.”

“Politics, death… it’s going pretty good so far,” Elling jokes before turning his attention to that most ever-present of mysteries, love, on guitarist John McLean’s warm arrangement of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “I Have Dreamed.” From finding love to maintaining it, “Every Day You’re Away” adds some romantic advice gleaned from many years as a traveling musician to Webster’s “Did You Call Her Today.” It is, as Elling points out, “an everyday question,” but one that’s just as important to ponder as the big questions posed by this repertoire.

“Maybe the questions themselves are the answers,” Elling muses before concluding this moving set with “Endless Lawns,” which pairs Carla Bley’s music with Elling’s own lyrics, adapted from a poem by Sara Teasdale. It sends the audience, and now listeners around the world, home on an optimistic if wistful note, countering the darkness of the day’s headlines with a welcome dose of hope.

“In the face of this unfolding catastrophe in front of us,” Elling says, “I at least want it known that I’m on the side of compassion, grace and fellowship – not on the side of division, fascism and ignorance.”

That sentiment is amply expressed, certainly, in Elling’s lyrics and performance, which is heartfelt but full of humor, bristling with passion yet ultimately brimming with faith in humanity. But it’s there as well in the collective spirit of jazz, the inspired interactions between Elling and his bandmates: guitarist John McLean, bassist Clark Sommers, drummer Adonis Rose, and, joining the regular band for this European jaunt, pianist and organist Jim Watson. Each one of these gifted musicians are given plenty of space to explore these heady questions in their own voices live on stage.

In the current political climate, Elling says, “the approach of jazz itself is a form of protest. The collegiality, the mutual support, the democratic; everybody gets a say and if you take a single member out there’s an essential ingredient missing. It’s not a complete community until everybody’s in their right and mutually supportive place.”

For Elling, that place is on stage, finding that night’s answers in communion with fellow musicians and rapt audiences. “I’m trying to give the music and the audience the best that I can,” he says, “and be true to the example of the cats who came before me.”

Kurt Elling, vocals
Jim Watson, piano, organ
Clark Sommers, bass
Adonis Rose, drums
John McLean, guitar

Live Sound/Recording Engineer: Tim Bray
Mixing and Mastering: Chris Allen
Produced by Kurt Elling and Bryan Farina

Kurt Elling
GRAMMY winner Kurt Elling is among the world’s foremost jazz vocalists. He won the DownBeat Critics Poll for fourteen consecutive years and was named “Male Singer of the Year” by the Jazz Journalists Association eight times in that same span. Every one of Elling’s ten albums has been nominated for a GRAMMY.

Elling’s rich baritone spans four octaves and features both astonishing technical mastery and emotional depth. His repertoire includes original compositions and modern interpretations of standards, all of which are springboards for inspired improvisation, scatting, spoken word and poetry.

The New York Timesdeclared, “Elling is the standout male vocalist of our time.” The Washington Post added, “Since the mid-1990s, no singer in jazz has been as daring, dynamic or interesting as Kurt Elling. With his soaring vocal flights, his edgy lyrics and sense of being on a musical mission, he has come to embody the creative spirit in jazz.”

Elling was the Artist-in-Residence for the Singapore and Monterey Jazz Festivals. He has also written multi-disciplinary works for The Steppenwolf Theatre and the City of Chicago. The Obama Administration’s first state dinner featured Elling in a command performance.

Elling is a renowned artist of vocalese – the writing and performing of words over recorded improvised jazz solos. The natural heir to jazz pioneers Eddie Jefferson, King Pleasure and Jon Hendricks, Elling has set his own lyrics to the improvised solos of Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny. He often incorporates images and references from writers such as Rilke, Rumi, Neruda and Proust into his work. The late poet and Bollingen Prize winner Robert Creeley wrote, “Kurt Elling takes us into a world of sacred particulars. His words are informed by a powerful poetic spirit.” Said Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate of the United States, “In Kurt Elling’s art, the voice of jazz gives a new spiritual presence to the ancient, sweet and powerful bond between poetry and music.”

Kurt Elling has toured vigorously throughout his career, thrilling audiences throughout the world. In that time he has led his own ensemble and has collaborated with many of the world’s finest orchestras.

Passion World, Kurt Elling’s newest recording, culminates nearly five years of collecting and honing songs – and in some cases writing new lyrics – that express love, romance and heartbreak around the world. Throughout his travels, Elling has observed how deeply felt passions are shaped in countless ways by each unique culture. Those insights have guided the creation of Passion World, a tour-de-force project that is vibrant with diversity, celebrating what makes us all human. In concert Elling tells rich stories about the history and context of each of these songs to sweep you away on a grand tour of exotic places, cultures and times. Passion World is a musical magic carpet taking you on a fascinating journey through the realms of romance in a concert not to be missed.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet