By James Turano
For Grammy-winning, internationally renowned jazz impresario—and Chicago native—Kurt Elling, Ravinia Festival’s famed “music under the stars” have aligned into his lucky stars.
In 2009, Elling won his first Grammy Award for the celebrated jazz homage Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman. And Elling performed at Ravinia Festival that same summer. Then, earlier this year, Elling won his second Grammy for the poetic, yarn-spinning Secrets Are the Best Stories, featuring Danilo Pérez, and fatefully he again returns to Ravinia on July 13 after a 12-year hiatus. Coincidence or celestially determined?
Jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter
Elling (a former divinity student) baptizes Ravinia’s new, intimate, outdoor Carousel Stage on the North Lawn with jazz guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter. The two will debut new music from their daring new album SuperBlue, which drops in September.
Musically, Elling’s boyhood burg of Rockford may be best known for Rock Hall of Famers (and Ravinia veterans) Cheap Trick, but Kurt Elling’s 25-year jazz career clearly can battle with the Tricksters for bragging rights.
Elling has earned awards and accolades from around the globe (including 14 Grammy nominations), played with many music legends (among them Branford Marsalis, blues pioneer Buddy Guy at the White House in 2016, and the late Marvin Hamlisch at President Obama’s first State Dinner), and dominated both the critics’ and readers’ polls of DownBeat magazine as “Male Vocalist of the Year” for more than 20 years. There must be something in that northern Illinois soil.
Elling was born into a melodic family, the son of the Kapellmeister of a Lutheran church. He sang in the choir, played various instruments, and continued choir in high school. Elling discovered and devoured jazz during his college years and pursued a master’s degree before dropping out to channel his ambitions in jazz.
He learned his trade and fed his sonic passions at Chicago jazz mainstays like Milt Trenier’s and the famed Green Mill Jazz Club. Since 1995, Elling has progressed his career impressively, praised by the New York Times as “the world’s standout male vocalist of our time.” Not bad for a Rockford choir boy.
After more than a decade living in New York, Elling and his family have returned to Chicago. Speaking by phone from his home in late May, it’s obvious Kurt Elling is a committed, socially conscious artist and one of jazz’s truest troubadours and astute ambassadors.
Make it nice, play it clean, jazz man.
Green Mill cocktail lounge in Uptown, Chicago. Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel
Have you remained creatively active during the pandemic?
I did concerts from my front porch for the neighborhood and audiences online. We did streamed performances live from the Green Mill, including a reworked version of The Big Blind, my work-in-progress, which is a noir, Broadway-style show. I also made a new record, SuperBlue, with Charlie Hunter—that’s what we’ll be playing at Ravinia. They’ll be one of the first audiences to hear it. I’ve just been trying to keep my head on straight.
This had to be the longest stretch you haven’t performed for a live audience.
It’s been a challenge, for sure. Yes, you’re right, this has been the longest stretch. I realized right away how much I missed it. I wanted to work again on my craft and collaborate with other musicians—to communicate to larger audiences about what was going on and have that psychic release and share it with them—that I certainly missed.
“I’m looking forward to finally meeting those cats. We’re going to have a good time.”
You recorded SuperBlue during the pandemic using email. That must have been a new process for you.
Exactly. I still haven’t met two members of the band in person! The band put together rhythm tracks with likely chord changes and sent them to me through email. I had to figure out a melody and lyrical ideas and lay in a bunch of tracks on my end. Then we sent them back and forth a couple of times. I’m looking forward to finally meeting those cats. We’re going to have a good time.
Did this “email songwriting” feel detached for you?
Jazz music has to have a spontaneous aspect—it can’t be if you’re sending files back and forth. This isn’t a jazz project, but it is musical. It’s an interesting experiment, and a great exploration, and I’m happy with what came out of it. But as soon as you take the spontaneous aspect out of it, it doesn’t have that “breathing” interaction you have with other people.
How would you describe SuperBlue?
Charlie Hunter and I have known each other for a boatload of years, and though our music is different, there is a middle ground, and that’s what we explored with [Butcher Brown drummer] Corey Fonville and [bassist/keyboardist] DJ Harrison. It’s really good back-beat, dancing music with some message in it.
Were you hesitant to experiment with hip-hop?
Jazz musicians can play anything—we choose to swing. We have all the technical virtuosity that everybody else has, but we also act as composers in front of an audience, in collaboration with other musicians, and we declare with technical mastery some melodies that have never been heard before. I’ve done funk. Jazz bleeds into that realm. They are both American music. Hip-hop, jazz, funk, gospel, blues—they’re all from the same family tree.
It wasn’t out of your comfort zone.
No. It’s not where I reside, but I’m happy to visit for a while.
“Music is an artform of emotion, moving around the molecules, and getting into the bloodstream of the listener—and of the performer. Jazz affected me in peculiar way, and it called to me. ”
How did someone who came of age at the height of ’70s Top 40 radio and rock’s dominance discover jazz?
I was first pulled into it by the sound. By the recordings and the feelings. Music is an artform of emotion, moving around the molecules, and getting into the bloodstream of the listener—and of the performer. Jazz affected me in peculiar way, and it called to me. I started hanging out with jazz musicians and people who were living the jazz lifestyle. They grabbed me by the arm and said, “You’re with us.”
Was there a “jazz epiphany” for you?
I was already sitting in, already hungry to learn more, already putting it out there in the Chicago jazz scene. But at the same time, I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. On one end, Von Freeman is encouraging me to sing just one more song until two in the morning in a lounge, and the next day I’m called to the professor’s office and he says [Elling uses an exaggerated German accent], “Mr. Elling, I have read your paper several times, and I have come to the conclusion that you don’t know what you’re talking about.” So, is that the door? [Laughs]. At that point I had nothing to lose.
Were you close to finishing your master’s degree?
Oh, yeah, I was only a credit or two shy. But I was pretty burnt out by then. The train was pulling out of the station. You can walk along the train, you can jog along next to the train, you can run with it, but eventually that train is going to go faster than you, and you’ll be just standing there. And that’s where I found myself.
The Chicago jazz scene had a profound influence on you.
Definitely. They gave me my vocation. Von [Freeman], Eddie Johnson, and Ed Petersen—chiefly the saxophone players seemed to hear something in me. But I’ve always had “Chicago bands.” Even when I was living in New York City, I had almost all Chicagoans in my band. And it’s one reason why we moved back. It’s home.
Your first record contract was with Blue Note—the “Mount Everest” of jazz record labels. That must have been a thrill.
It was definitely a shot in the arm. But it meant a different thing to me. To be signed by Blue Note was a validation in the industry, but that wouldn’t have happened without the guys in Chicago pushing me and moving me. Then it was a matter of living up to the “Blue Note identity.” And singing what is worthy of my audience.
What music do you consider “worthy” of your audience?
The best possible, most appropriately targeted music that I can produce. Everything happens in context. Here I come to Ravinia amid COVID, and people are feeling a mix of emotions and I’m feeling a lot of those too. What’s the right music for me to sing that’s as satisfying to my audience as it will be for me? People who come to my shows trust me to challenge them and to not rest on my laurels—and offer music of the highest quality.
Are you confident your audience will follow your musical explorations?
To varying degrees, you either stay close to the songbook or you deviate from it—it’s the launching pad. You want a family resemblance to your sound with the artists that came before. No one is genius enough to invent something whole cloth. You need to learn the context and the history of the music; otherwise, you don’t love it. Jazz has set its standards, and I embrace them. Once you’ve got that, you have a lifetime of invigorating investigation in front of you.
Which brings us back to your return to Ravinia.
Oh, we’re going to have a ball. It’s going to be the band on the record. We’re going to have so much fun together. A lot of fun.
James Turano is a freelance writer and a former entertainment editor, feature writer, and columnist for national and local magazines and newspapers. He has written official programs for eight Elton John tours since 2003 and is also a Chicago radio personality and host on WGN 720AM.