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The Jazz Singers

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Day
24
Month
June
Year
2001
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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Summer Festival unites Kurt Elling and Patricia Barber

By MARTHA IRVINE

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO - It’s standing room only at the Green Mill, a dark, smoky Chicago jazz dub once frequented by Al Capone. And Kurt Elling is introducing a song from his third album, “This Time It’s Love.”

A handful of people clap when asked if they know the album.

“My mother thanks you,” he says, following the joke with one of his oft-heard deep chuckles.

Commercial success has not come easy to this religion student-turned-jazz singer, despite four Grammy nominations for as many albums, including one this year for his latest release “Live in Chicago.” (He’s still waiting for his first win.)

In some moments, his voice and choice of tunes evokes the spirit of crooners like Frank Sinatra and Mel Tonne. In others, he’s more a beatnik poet, firing off tightly woven scats, or the great experimenter, emitting sounds more like a screeching saxophone or blaring trumpet than a human.

With his ponytail, tinted black-rimmed glasses and propensity for calling his fellow musicians “cats,” critics have called Elling everything from a “hipmeister” to a “faux hipster” - proof that there is nothing dear-cut or easy about the 33-year-old Elling, who’ll share Thursday’s Ann Arbor Summer Festival bill with Patricia Barber at the Power Center.

Even after a poll of critics last year deemed Elling Down Beat magazine’s male vocalist of the year, not everyone stood up and applauded. Los Angeles Times jazz critic Don Heckman, who calls Elling “eccentric,” said his selection indicated that the pool of male jazz singers “ain’t what it used to be.”

Sitting on a piano bench in the South Side Chicago flat he shares with his wife, Elling shrugs when asked about the comment, noting that his performances at Los Angeles’

Jazz Bakery sold out last year.

Fame? Sure, he’ll take it

“But I want to do it in the context of making music that I really believe in and being a jazz singer - being a real jazz singer," he says. "And that means being an innovator and challenging people.

ELLING: HOPING FOR MAINSTREAM RECOGNITION

"So in a certain number of very important ways, I'm my ambition's own worst enemy because I'm dedicated to the music first and the ambition second."

It's not that he doesn't like ballads. One only needs to listen to songs on his latest album such as "My Foolish Heart," with lyrics based on an ancient poem by St. John of the Cross, and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" to determine that.

But Elling says there's an art to balancing the ballads with the more brain-twisting - and even ear-taxing - pieces. "It's one of the things about communicating with and audience that you really have to learn is 'How much more of this can they take?"' he says.

Elling grew up in suburban Chicago and Rockford, IL. His father was a church musician who also taught music at Lutheran high schools. And his mother gave music lessons. But even though he sang with his college swing band, he initially felt a higher calling.

He studied religion at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., and began pursuing his master's degree at the University of Chicago Divinity School - seemingly a million miles from the club scenes in Chicago, New York and the many other cities he now frequents on tour.

But though he had no formal training, the urge to sing tugged at him, slowly pulling him away from his studies to low-paying or no-paying gigs at an admittedly seedy club just north of Chicago.

"It was me and some very low-level gangsters and their girlfriends and,you know, just a couple of neighborhood people - and that was it!"

But Elling was hooked. Eventually, he quit school, took a job with a moving company to make ends meet, rented a one-room basement apartment for $150 a month, wrote songs and listened endlessly to jazz "sides," absorbing the works of his jazz heroes: among them Wayne Shorter, Betty Carter and Jon Hendricks, a pioneering vocalist who's on the "Living in Chicago" album.

Even from the start, Elling says experienced musicians took him under their wing and let him sit in on gigs - even though he was admittedly "green" and "squirrelly."

Pianist Laurence Hobgood remembers his reaction when the leader of a band he was playing with let Elling sing a few songs with them in 1983 at the Green Mill.

"It was somewhat of a shock to hear that this young singer was going to sit in with us," Hobgood says. "But as soon as he started singing, I was like, 'Oh OK. I get it now. This guy can sing!'"

The two became friends. And now Hobgood tours with Elling and co-produces his albums,the next of which is due in August (on the Blue Note label).

Though the cities have sometimes been tough, Hobgood says Elling has learned to heed the constructive criticism and as a result pared down his on-stage banter and honed his vocal technique.

Bob Blumenthal,a Grammy-Winning music critic from Newton, Mass., says he thinks Elling has come into his own in recent years.

"He's leaps and bounds ahead of most singers," Blumenthal says. "And I think in terms of imagination, he has a lot going for him as well."

Blumenthal says he especially admires the "spiritually driven" lyrics that Elling wrote for the Wayne Shorter composition "Night Dreamer" on Elling's latest album. 

As Elling's reputation has grown, so have his CD sales. His 1997 release "The Messenger" has sold the most - about 16,500 copies.("Good for a jazz record," Elling says.)

Now he's hoping for the same sort of mainstream recognition that singers like Cassandra Wilson- who's managed to cross over into the mainstream with some albums while maintaining a reputation for innovation - has found.

And while he is no longer a formal student of religion, he says there's a certain amount of faith involved in making it in the music business.

"At it's essence, it requires a similar dedication," he says, comparing music to spirituality. "It requires a similar hope against all odds. It requires that you're  a servant. And it communicates about human experience."

 

 

Who: Patricia Barber, and Kurt Elling. When: 8 p.m., Thursday. Where: Power Center, 121 Fletcher St. How much: $28-$18. For information, phone (734) 764-2538.

By CHARLES J. CANS

 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Patricia Barber dares to be different in everything, from her choice of repertoire to her style of dress, and that has made the singer-pianist-songwriter one of the most unique performers on today’s jazz scene.

At a recent gig at Joe’s Pub in lower Manhattan, the 45-year-old Barber, was dressed entirely in black - suit jacket, pants and beret - and barefoot as she completely reconstructed “The Beat Goes On,” adding an element of sophistication to the banal Sonny & Cher tune.

The daughter of a saxophonist who played with Glenn Miller’s orchestra. Barber majored in classical music and psychology at the University of Iowa.

She eventually moved to Chicago where, in 1984, she began a decade-long run at the trendy Gold Star Sardine Bar, and then moved to the Green Mill jazz club, where an ongoing weekly gig gives her a chance to develop new material with her band.

In the ’90s, Barber released the critically acclaimed albums “Cafe Blue,” “Modem Cool” and “Companion.” She forged her own identity as a jazz singer with gender-bending versions of rock songs, adaptations of poems and her own quirky compositions, including the satirical “Postmodern Blues,” which covers the gamut of 20th-century trends, from Marxism and Picasso’s cubism to Bill Gates and stock market rallies.

Her latest album, “Nightclub” (Premonition/Blue Note), offers a different twist because it’s her first recording consisting entirely of jazz and pop standards - something most singers do early in their careers. In a spare trio setting, her prowess as a pianist comes more to the forefront, as she gives her own definition to such tunes as “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “Autumn Leaves” and “Alfie.”d

Barber has said that becoming a jazz musician is a stupid thing for a smart woman to do. So why did she? “It was a legacy left to me by my father who was a jazz musician," she says.

BARBER: RECREATES FEEL OF A CLUB LATE AT NIGHT

"Somehow it's in my blood.It's only when I'm in the music, composing or performing, that I realize that it's just where I'm supposed to be. But I still think it's a stupid thing for a woman to do."

Open about her sexual orientation as a gay woman, Barber says she hasn't encountered the resistance some might expect.

"When you look at my audience- whether it be at Green Mill or big festivals - it's absolutely mixed," she says of her fans. "So I certainly haven't felt limited by my sexual orientation. I'm open about it, but I try to make the songs have universal sentiments for the most part."

"Love and sexuality - everybody should understand what that is. And I think it does somehow appeal to a broader audience."

It's not an easy thing to combine voice and piano accompaniment in jazz. "There aren't many people who do it well," Barker points out. "I've been working at combining the two for a long time and it's no longer difficult for me to do so. In fact, it would be more difficult for me to separate the two."

Why did it take so ling for her to get around to recording an all-standards album like " Nightclub"? "I didn't do a recording of standards before because I was afraid to be categorized as somebody who only did that. I wanted to create an identity that was more independent, and I feel now that I've done that. So the standards recording is for my mom - who's been waiting for it for 20 years - and also for my late-night fans who have been so loyal.

"A big part of my repertoire is standards, and it was something I wanted to do....I just thought that perhaps I've become an artist who can actually give this standard repertoire that so many people have done my own spin and individual sound....

"There is a very special rapport between the performer and the audience that can happen in a nightclub late at night, and that's what I wanted to re-create. As the producer, I didn't want a CD to be slick or have any hooks or be thematic. ... I didn't want to overthink it most and most of what you hear are first takes. I wanted it to sound sincere. ... To have a certain quiet integrity and elegance."