Kurt Elling Quotes
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My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable.
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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.
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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.
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I had everything to gain by giving it everything I could.
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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.
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I'm a guy who has more slapstick than Joe Cool moments in his day, so I'm not taking myself so seriously.
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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.
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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.
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The idea is to be unrestrained by categories.
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People want to have access to jazz because it has a vibe that's very strong.
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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.
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I'm a goof, man.
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The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.
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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.
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A lot of people are put off by the idea of scat singing. Either that or it's something to be made fun of.
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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.
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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.
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You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.
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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.
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You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician.
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I've got more low notes than I had when I started.
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As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.
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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.
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There are incredible musicians around the world.