Kurt Elling Quotes
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I think I make most of my decisions pretty organically.
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Audiences have taught me how to sing better and entertain better.
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With a smaller setting, you have a lot more freedom and flexibility within a given moment, but not necessarily the velocity you have with a big band.
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You learn as much as you can from the people that you work with. That's why you want to surround yourself with the heaviest people that you can possibly get to.
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We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind.
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It's a lovely thing to have people in any circumstance appreciate your work.
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At a certain point, the graduate school thing didn't work out, and that meant I was liberated.
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It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man.
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Sometimes people have this notion that improvisation is simply intuitive leaping into the unknown.
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I hope to be at the top of my game when I'm 65 or 70. I don't want to reach my peak at 29. Not that I'm holding back anything, but there's a bunch of junk I don't know.
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If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase.
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I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.
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That's the thing: There are so many art songs in jazz. It's a much more rich experience for the singer than people think.
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I can't say New York's home, but I've made a lot of friends, and I'm developing a map of what cats are here and where they play, and as a singer, you're always looking for projects that tie things in emotionally and intuitively with your life.
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Listening to something without being present is different from being there in the flesh.
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I remember seeing Tony Bennett on television. He was the only guy in the orchestra who was wearing a white tux, and I thought, 'That would be good. To be the only man on stage in a white jacket.'
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A lot of the commercial world wants to bank in on the cachet that jazz brings.
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When improvisation is properly applied, it is compositional thinking, sped way up.
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You don't show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that's the way jazz has always progressed as an art form.
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If you're going to be transparent, you're going to have to let the music come that wants to come.
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Out in L.A., things relax even further than they do in Chicago. There's such a looseness to it, and there's a potentially refreshing advantage to that.
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I travel all the time. And as I go around the world, I try to learn a little something and not just take up all the available air.
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I really thought I was gonna have a straight gig. But these jazz musicians put their arms around me time and again and said, 'Hey, young fella, you're one of us. Come with us.' That's a big deal when you're young and looking for your way in the world.
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I don't really have a more intellectualized approach. After the fact, I can sure talk about stuff a lot - but when I make decisions, I really just follow what sounds good to me.