Tanglewood

Review of Kurt Elling at Tanglewood Jazz Festival

By Dave ⋅ September 5, 2007 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Sept. 1, 2007 performance reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Kurt Elling’s concert Saturday night in Ozawa Hall felt like a festival in itself. He seems to inhabit several decades at once and his repertoire has pan-hemispheric roots. For someone with a body of work so clearly the product of a restless and boundless artistic temperament, he is a warm and casual host. His stagecraft is engaging and edifying, melding seamlessly with the musical selections.

Elling was decked out in the manner of confident hep cat, circa 1957, with a dark grey suit, melon colored shirt and matching pocket square, no neck tie, of course, but a black tee shirt showing. His hair showed evidence of Brylcreme instead of a blow dryer and he wore low-heeled brown boots that would’ve been called P.R.F.C.’s in the decidedly unhip neighborhood of my youth.

About half his set consisted of numbers with his backing trio and the balance was done in various combinations that included saxophonist Joel Frahm, guitarist Romero Lubamo, and harmonica player Gregoire Maret.

Whereas this set proceeded along one high plain of mastery, the closing number, Elling’s “vocalese” treatment of Dexter Gordon’s Body and Soul, was the piece de resistance. This was where every aspect of Elling’s vocal artistry was on display, with the added element of cool Beat poetics tempering the gushing lyric, addressed to his daughter, wherein Elling is”… explaining myself to you…”

Sounds like a crazy idea, a song that’s both a paean to one’s daughter and a tribute to someone else, but I guess that’s the nature of “vocalese” - grafting a new lyric onto an instrumental composition. Of course, tribute to the composer is there by default, but in this instance, it’s especially there when Elling compresses the heretofore languid lyric and adjusts the pitch so that he sounds like a saxophone, somehow managing to keep the lyric intelligible. Not exactly scat singing, Elling was honk-talking!