Fine & Performing Arts

 JAZZ REVIEW
By Howard Reich
Chicago Tribune critic
January 26, 2009

Two of Chicago’s most innovative jazz artists unveiled their newest music over the weekend, to often startling effect.

It has been a long time since singer Kurt Elling offered work that delivered on his early promise. But the sounds he produced Friday night at Wentz Concert Hall, in Naperville, pointed to a musician returning to the artistic values that made him noteworthy in the first place.

Unlike the lightweight fare he offered on his most recent CD, the disappointing “Nightmoves,” this time Elling dug deeper. Certainly he took on a formidable challenge in performing the repertoire of “John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman,” a classic album that partnered the iconic saxophonist with the magisterial singer.

The risk for Elling was considerable, since his pliant, reedy instrument is no match for Hartman’s ultra-plush bass-baritone (no one’s is). To compensate, Elling shrewdly enlisted the support of a string quartet. So what Elling’s voice lacked in sonic heft was obscured by the luster of pianist Laurence Hobgood’s arrangements.

More important, though, Elling boldly re-imagined Hartman’s balladry, performing this repertory (and other material) with the melodic ingenuity and daredevil phrasing of the early portion of his career. His buoyantly creative lines in “Dedicated to You” and arialike phrases in “Lush Life” represented some of the best ballad singing being performed today.

The only flaw in the proceedings concerned Elling’s ongoing genuflections to Frank Sinatra. Do we really need to hear another version of “Nancy With the Laughing Face”?

On Saturday night, drummer Dana Hall led an all-star quintet at the Green Mill in music more explosive than Elling’s, but equally well crafted. The high point arrived with Herbie Hancock’s “I Have a Dream,” which inspired shattering solos from saxophonist Tim Warfield and trumpeter Terell Stafford, and, of course, hyper-virtuoso work from Hall.

Howard Reich, jazz critic for the Chicago Tribune, writes about jazz vocalist Kurt Elling’s Jan. 23 performance in the Wentz Concert Hall and Fine Arts Center in an online entry. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-0123-best-chicago-jazzjan23,0,3958907.story

By Ann Piccininni, Daily Herald

Grammy Award-nominated jazz singer Kurt Elling returns from a jaunt across Europe and a one-night gig in New York’s Allen Room for a single evening performance Friday in North Central College’s Wentz Hall.

“I’m doing a special thing for the gig in Naperville,” Elling said. “It’s sort of a special project.”

The concert, he said, will center around an innovative homage to a collaboration between saxophonist John Coltrane and singer Johnny Hartman, a classic studio album recorded in 1963.

Titled “Dedicated to You,” the show will feature Elling’s vocals paired with Ernie Watts on saxophone. They will be joined by the Ethel String Quartet, Elling’s touring rhythm section featuring Juilliard-trained drummer Ulysses Owens and bassist Clark Sommers, and the Laurence Hobgood Trio

“Laurence and I wrote this together,” Elling said. “I do like to do jazz standards when I can, re-create them in a new way.”

A baritone with a four-octave range, Elling is well-known to patrons of Chicago’s Green Mill tavern in the city’s Uptown neighborhood. Elling is a Wednesday night mainstay there when he’s in town.

“I haven’t had a chance to do that for a while,” he said. “We’ve been in New York – for about six months now.”

Elling said in between tour dates that take him to destinations as disparate as Iowa and France, he’s been enjoying a “kind of creative sabbatical.”

While a sabbatical for most people means being “less busy,” he said, he’s inclined toward the opposite, “working on writing things with different writing partners.”

Elling, whose long list of awards and accolades was augmented recently with his being voted the top male vocalist in the JazzTimes Readers Poll, has a history as a Chicago divinity school student and a penchant for deep, contemplative lyrics.

A revised edition of his book, “Lyrics,” a compendium of the words to a sampling of work, is due out this fall.