Kurt Elling Quotes

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.

- Kurt Elling

I try to sleep as much as I can. I drink a lot of water. I practice consistently and just try to be ready for the gig.

- Kurt Elling

Music is a physical expression that has a physical impact upon the listener. Sound travels in waves through the air. This is not abstract. This is scientific fact. And it makes physical contact with the eardrum... and with the heart... and with the rest of the body.

- Kurt Elling

I've got enough miles under my belt to know that whatever you envision in your mind, even if it comes true, will only keep a shape in the most general way.

- Kurt Elling

I like the power and versatility of a big band and how an orchestra can vary the dynamics from very loud to very quiet, and SNJO covers those bases.

- Kurt Elling

I'm one of the culprits who keeps turning stuff around, shaking up original tunes and trying to stand the canon on its ear. But sometimes, you just need to sing the song.

- Kurt Elling

Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene.

- Kurt Elling

It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band.

- Kurt Elling

Chicago has a burly, action-oriented but still self-assured and relaxed confidence to its stride. The city has a lot of wide-open space and all the possibilities that suggests. There's a lot of horizontal grandeur here.

- Kurt Elling

When improvisation is properly applied, it is compositional thinking, sped way up.

- Kurt Elling

My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable.

- Kurt Elling

I hope that I'm also maturing emotionally as a human being as things go on.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

The idea is to be unrestrained by categories.

- Kurt Elling

I consider myself very fortunate. I have a beautiful wife who supports my work and is raising our daughter when I'm out on the road.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

Each of the CDs prior to 'Flirting With Twilight' were more like roller-coaster rides.

- Kurt Elling

It's a beautiful thing to have time in the world, as a singer and as a musician, to make friends with people of the musical caliber of a Tommy Smith, an Arturo Sandoval, a Richard Galliano, a Till Broenner.

- Kurt Elling

I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day.

- Kurt Elling

I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking.

- Kurt Elling

I think I make most of my decisions pretty organically.

- Kurt Elling

Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me.

- Kurt Elling

At a certain point, the graduate school thing didn't work out, and that meant I was liberated.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

You don't just let a guy drop off the earth and not come together with everybody who knew him and loved him and respected him. You try to do it the right way.

- Kurt Elling

Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it.

- Kurt Elling

Romance is one of the things that most countries share, and I've noticed how different communities have their own ways of singing about love and heartbreak.

- Kurt Elling

I'd been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn't been doing well, because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night - it's hard to read Heidegger, but it's especially hard if you're half asleep.

- Kurt Elling

Listening to something without being present is different from being there in the flesh.

- Kurt Elling

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

- Kurt Elling

There is an actor's responsibility in presenting the emotional content of the lyrics to an audience. But whether you do that in a straightforward fashion or an ironic fashion or a blase fashion is all about opportunities, and singers are missing opportunities as artists if they don't pay attention to the lyric.

- Kurt Elling

In New York, the drummers rush for a reason - because there's so much energy crackling through everything in that city and so many collisions at a highly accelerated rate.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal.

- Kurt Elling

I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.

- Kurt Elling

It's a lovely thing to have people in any circumstance appreciate your work.

- Kurt Elling

People just want to dig; they want to dance. They don't want to work all through the night, and neither do I. I like getting 'out there,' but communication should be occurring on more levels than heavy-laden philosophical.

- Kurt Elling

Part of my joy as a singer is to give gifts to people, and one way I try to connect to them is to add something in French or German or whatever.

- Kurt Elling

Sometimes, with vocalese, I'm dealing with something, a great solo from the past, which is so iconic I can't presume to change it or mess with it.

- Kurt Elling

I've tried to educate myself in the world and what's beautiful and what has meaning and is lasting. Then I just follow my intuition and see how it fits.

- Kurt Elling

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.'

- Kurt Elling

The singer is always an ambassador of music.

- Kurt Elling

You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear.

- Kurt Elling

You want to be doing your best work whatever field of the arts you're in because your life's going to be over all too soon, and you have to make the most of it.

- Kurt Elling

Sometimes people have this notion that improvisation is simply intuitive leaping into the unknown.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

I was very lucky that more experienced musicians allowed me to caterwaul until I figured out what it was really about.

- Kurt Elling

I couldn't do what I do without the encouragement and influence of the musicians I played with in Chicago.

- Kurt Elling

There's a spiritual complement to any attempt at transposing a commitment to humanity through music or art.

- Kurt Elling

It must be a hellish thing to know what's possible in music, to be hearing things all the time and not have an appropriate outlet for them.

- Kurt Elling

We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind.

- Kurt Elling

It helps me to learn things in different languages, even if it's just phonetically, and to make myself vulnerable to other audiences by trying to reflect back to them the genius of their own cultures, and to do that, oftentimes, in new jazz settings, new arrangements. It's a way to show respect.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase.

- Kurt Elling

Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves.

- Kurt Elling

The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.

- Kurt Elling

Chicago is my home. And the way Chicago sounds will always be a part of who I am.

- Kurt Elling

I'm a guy who has more slapstick than Joe Cool moments in his day, so I'm not taking myself so seriously.

- Kurt Elling

I've tried to learn as much as I can about the great jazz singers to understand what makes them important, vital artists, but there is always something more to learn.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close.

- Kurt Elling

I haven't been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles?

- Kurt Elling

I didn't arrive on the scene until after Jaco Pastorius had passed, but 'Three Views of a Secret' is a long-time favourite of mine.

- Kurt Elling

I spend upwards of 200 nights a year on the road.

- Kurt Elling

Salacious? I suppose every once in a while the salacious thing is not a bad thing. It's kind of monochromatic if that's all you do.

- Kurt Elling

Grammy nominations are certainly pleasant, but you can forget about them and lead a perfectly happy life - provided you have the approval of the musicians you work with.

- Kurt Elling

There's a wide spectrum of possibilities in how to deliver a song.

- Kurt Elling

I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.

- Kurt Elling

I'm lucky that I enjoy touring as much as I do. I'm not going to make a living just making records.

- Kurt Elling

You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment.

- Kurt Elling

You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician.

- Kurt Elling

While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed.

- Kurt Elling

I've worked with a number of big bands, but there's nothing in life like the Basie band.

- Kurt Elling

If you're going to be transparent, you're going to have to let the music come that wants to come.

- Kurt Elling

Audiences have taught me how to sing better and entertain better.

- Kurt Elling

You can never predict what the specific shape of your life is going to be, and you won't really know its general shape until, God willing, you're advanced in years and you have the time and opportunity to look back in a coherent way and see what your life was about.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.

- Kurt Elling

It's true that I'm not known as a crooner or balladeer. I'm known for a more crusading or quixotic temperament.

- Kurt Elling

I try to stick with things that I can sing with honesty.

- Kurt Elling

There are incredible musicians around the world.

- Kurt Elling

As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.

- Kurt Elling

My goal is to be really incredible by the time I'm 70.

- Kurt Elling

A lot of the commercial world wants to bank in on the cachet that jazz brings.

- Kurt Elling

Why limit yourself to one discipline or field of study?

- Kurt Elling

If I was going to sell out, I would do it for more than 10,000 records.

- Kurt Elling

A lot of people are put off by the idea of scat singing. Either that or it's something to be made fun of.

- Kurt Elling

My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of.

- Kurt Elling

People want to have access to jazz because it has a vibe that's very strong.

- Kurt Elling

I've got more low notes than I had when I started.

- Kurt Elling

I had everything to gain by giving it everything I could.

- Kurt Elling

I want to be the jazz singer.

- Kurt Elling

One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.

- Kurt Elling

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.

- Kurt Elling

'Man in the Air' was an experience in exercise.

- Kurt Elling

I'm a goof, man.

- Kurt Elling