Kurt Elling Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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I spend upwards of 200 nights a year on the road.
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While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed.
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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.
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Chicago is my home. And the way Chicago sounds will always be a part of who I am.
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I try to stick with things that I can sing with honesty.
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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.
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I don't want to take it easy.
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I want to be the jazz singer.
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I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal.
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If I was going to sell out, I would do it for more than 10,000 records.
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One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.
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It's true that I'm not known as a crooner or balladeer. I'm known for a more crusading or quixotic temperament.
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My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of.
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You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear.
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You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment.