KURT ELLING – The Questions
Okeh Records 88985492832
Kurt Elling (voice) Stu Mindeman (piano, Hammond B-3) Joey Calderazzo (piano on tracks 4.6.9) John McLean (acoustic & electric guitars) Clark Summers (bass) Branford Marsalis (saxes) Marquis Hill (trumpet, fluegelhorn) Jeff “Tain”. Watts (drums) Recorded October 5-12th 2017 at Sear Sound, New York.
Following last year’s highly successful collaboration with the Branford Marsalis Quartet which resulted in the album `Upward Spiral` by, Kurt Elling returns with a fascinating variety of tunes that pose existential and metaphysical questions augmented by a trio of songbook standards which dovetail neatly into the overall concept. If `The Questions` finds Elling in a pensive mood, afflicted by the ennui of the times, and lacks some of the joie de vivre of the previous album, he modulates the emotional temperature of each tune with acuity, never descending into bathos and maintains a level of profundity that is engaging, thought provoking and in places quite moving, confirming him in his position as the jazz scene’s leading hip philosopher/vocalist.
Though questions of this nature rarely bring about radical social change, as the passage from Rainer Maria Rilke’s `Letters to a Young Poet` contained in the booklet suggests, in asking them one eventually comes to live the answer by giving succour and sustenance to what Abraham Lincoln memorably called the “better angels of our nature”. Elling begins this transformative quest by launching into a version of Dylan’s celebrated take on the old Border ballad `Lord Randall’, ‘Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall`, imparting a convincingly preachy gravitas to the somewhat contrived `Book of Revelations` style apocalyptic visions contained in the lyric. Not a tune readily adapted to the jazz metric it does settle into a 4/4 groove for Marsalis’s tenor solo and ends with some doom laden drumming seeming to presage the coming of a day of reckoning. A more successful, jazz amenable borrowing from the singer/songwriter genre comes with a powerful rendering of Paul Simon’s `American Song` and Peter Gabriel’s `Washing of the Water`, both sung straight without any uncharacteristic embellishments and in every way as affecting as the original versions.
Greater poets than Dylan are pressed into service , their musings added to or forming the lyrics to a number of tunes better known as instrumentals; thus words by the Sufi mystic Rumi find their way into a version of Jaco Pastorious’s `Three Views of a Secret` which becomes `A Secret in Three Views` and those of Sara Teasdale’s `Winter Stars` which form the lyric of Carla Bley’s tune `Lawns` , that in turn becomes `Endless Lawns`, a tune vaguely reminiscent of Jobim’s `Waters of March` , providing a thoughtful reflection on the apparent permanence of the heavens in contrast with the change and turbulence of earthly affairs. The words of another American poet, the modernist Wallace Stevens, are applied to a Joey Calderazzo original `The Enchantress` and Franz Wright’s ruminations on mortality are turned into a song by keyboardist Stu Mindeman entitled `A Happy Thought`.
If none of this sounds like a bag of laughs, then one can take heart that the excellence of the instrumental settings, the vitality of the rhythmic solutions and several peerless solos, allied to the hip urbanity of Elling’s voice, steer the enterprise away from any pietistical abyss that might threaten. Highlights come in the form of Marsalis’s, soprano solo on the standard `I Have Dreamed`, an object lesson in sustained melodic invention, and the eloquent flugelhorn solos by emerging star, Marquis Hill on `Endless Lawns` and `Lonely Town`, the latter rendered as a gentle samba. Everything else is of the highest order and there is impeccable musicianship throughout, just as you would expect from anything Marsalis -who is cited as co-producer – puts his name to and with each successive playing this record becomes ever more enjoyable, insinuating itself upon the mind and the ear. It promises to become a best of the year choice.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
Okeh Records 88985492832
Kurt Elling (voice) Stu Mindeman (piano, Hammond B-3) Joey Calderazzo (piano on tracks 4.6.9) John McLean (acoustic & electric guitars) Clark Summers (bass) Branford Marsalis (saxes) Marquis Hill (trumpet, fluegelhorn) Jeff “Tain”. Watts (drums) Recorded October 5-12th 2017 at Sear Sound, New York.
Following last year’s highly successful collaboration with the Branford Marsalis Quartet which resulted in the album `Upward Spiral` by, Kurt Elling returns with a fascinating variety of tunes that pose existential and metaphysical questions augmented by a trio of songbook standards which dovetail neatly into the overall concept. If `The Questions` finds Elling in a pensive mood, afflicted by the ennui of the times, and lacks some of the joie de vivre of the previous album, he modulates the emotional temperature of each tune with acuity, never descending into bathos and maintains a level of profundity that is engaging, thought provoking and in places quite moving, confirming him in his position as the jazz scene’s leading hip philosopher/vocalist.
Though questions of this nature rarely bring about radical social change, as the passage from Rainer Maria Rilke’s `Letters to a Young Poet` contained in the booklet suggests, in asking them one eventually comes to live the answer by giving succour and sustenance to what Abraham Lincoln memorably called the “better angels of our nature”. Elling begins this transformative quest by launching into a version of Dylan’s celebrated take on the old Border ballad `Lord Randall’, ‘Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall`, imparting a convincingly preachy gravitas to the somewhat contrived `Book of Revelations` style apocalyptic visions contained in the lyric. Not a tune readily adapted to the jazz metric it does settle into a 4/4 groove for Marsalis’s tenor solo and ends with some doom laden drumming seeming to presage the coming of a day of reckoning. A more successful, jazz amenable borrowing from the singer/songwriter genre comes with a powerful rendering of Paul Simon’s `American Song` and Peter Gabriel’s `Washing of the Water`, both sung straight without any uncharacteristic embellishments and in every way as affecting as the original versions.
Greater poets than Dylan are pressed into service , their musings added to or forming the lyrics to a number of tunes better known as instrumentals; thus words by the Sufi mystic Rumi find their way into a version of Jaco Pastorious’s `Three Views of a Secret` which becomes `A Secret in Three Views` and those of Sara Teasdale’s `Winter Stars` which form the lyric of Carla Bley’s tune `Lawns` , that in turn becomes `Endless Lawns`, a tune vaguely reminiscent of Jobim’s `Waters of March` , providing a thoughtful reflection on the apparent permanence of the heavens in contrast with the change and turbulence of earthly affairs. The words of another American poet, the modernist Wallace Stevens, are applied to a Joey Calderazzo original `The Enchantress` and Franz Wright’s ruminations on mortality are turned into a song by keyboardist Stu Mindeman entitled `A Happy Thought`.
If none of this sounds like a bag of laughs, then one can take heart that the excellence of the instrumental settings, the vitality of the rhythmic solutions and several peerless solos, allied to the hip urbanity of Elling’s voice, steer the enterprise away from any pietistical abyss that might threaten. Highlights come in the form of Marsalis’s, soprano solo on the standard `I Have Dreamed`, an object lesson in sustained melodic invention, and the eloquent flugelhorn solos by emerging star, Marquis Hill on `Endless Lawns` and `Lonely Town`, the latter rendered as a gentle samba. Everything else is of the highest order and there is impeccable musicianship throughout, just as you would expect from anything Marsalis -who is cited as co-producer – puts his name to and with each successive playing this record becomes ever more enjoyable, insinuating itself upon the mind and the ear. It promises to become a best of the year choice.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
