Absorbing and Personifying the Music ? Interview with Kurt Elling

 

Indeed, it was not a straight forward start but it was not the only thing in my life that was not straight forward. I was unable to make a decision, yet I thought I knew what I wanted. I studied philosophy and wanted to learn about the world. I was preparing for my masters degree in philosophy because a lot of that stuff interested me, but in the meantime I would sit in clubs almost every day and every evening, so after some time, you known how that goes?. You cannot study Schleiermacher and Habermas with due efficiency when you are emerged in listening to John Coltrane in the evenings and till four in the morning. I would go to the Green Mill, where the saxophonist Ed Peterson and his quartet first encouraged me to join. Laurence Hobgood played piano with them, and he later became my permanent accompanist.

 

 

Well, that?s not what really matters. I think many people have chosen them as singers worth learning from. What matters is how much you are ready to work on absorbing and personifying the music. Making the right choices about whom to look up to does not really matter in itself, perhaps only shows that you have good taste. That will not make you an artist; good taste is not enough for that.

 

 

To be brighter, work harder and wish stronger for success. I don?t mean the obvious, stage success, but to be successful and at the same time, maintain your own life as an artist. That means you need to absorb what happened before and try to understand what?s coming in the future?.You must have the right technique, the right approach, and the right lifestyle that will allow it to become a reality. But for that you must work as hard as possible in the rehearsal room or the class room. There might be as many as 50 people in the same course and only one or two of them will achieve what they want.

 

 

That?s my writer self. I am lucky enough to have well-developed perception and I have been able to learn from famous and good writers. Words play an important role in presenting new material and revealing what?s at the bottom of famous numbers. They help me as a singer in introducing new songs. Being a jazzman, I must take the composer?s position. When you improvise, you also compose the music. Nothing is left to chance; it?s not a matter of chance, but purely an emotional issue. You must apply a composer?s way of thinking in real time, in front of an audience and in cooperation with the other musicians. An important basic condition is that one must continually think like a composer. I think to a certain level, I am able to create rhymes; I have tried to learn from Jon Hendricks as much as possible and from other greats, from Eddie Jefferson and King Pleasure, from Annie Ross and Mark Murphy. Mark is also a very good lyricist. That?s something only a jazz singer can put on the table. I am what you call in American sports a good all-rounder, someone that can work in different positions. I am not a David Becham but rather a useful player in multiple posts.

 

 

Yes, I have been experimenting with different things, working for theatres in Chicago and we even toured around with some pieces, in America and then up in Canada, even in Ireland, the United Kingdom and France. But you know that was different, for this would say I?m just a dilettante.

 

 

From Barack? Yes, it is.

 

 

He was my local representative then. We used to live in the same neighbourhood. He wanted to buy a larger house for his family and I needed my washing machine and dryer to be within the flat.

 

 

I was born there and grew up in Chicagoland. After basic training, I pursued my university studies in Chicago. I took on my vocation there because local musicians accepted me and got me involved. They invited me every evening to play with them. When you are young and it shows that you are talented, there must be someone who comes and says: Hey come with us. And that?s exactly what happened to me. I would have never thought that I?d become a jazz musician one day, perhaps only dreamt or fantasised about it. But I would have never become one if these musicians had not invited me to come with them. That?s what Chicago has given me.

 

 

I don?t think it would have happened in New York at all. Everyone there is only concerned with how to make it. I think I was unusually fortunate having been in Chicago ? in the Green Mill which was the right place at the right time. Sometime you really need to be very lucky not to be in New York. Later, of course, it?s good to live there but not to stay there forever.

 

 

You are from Budapest and you can rely on an unbelievably rich tradition, a place where many virtuoso musicians are at work. Poetry, imagination and creativity are in the air. Jazz has always fed on things that have a strong taste. When Dizzy Gillespie discovered afro-Cuban music, he had been a mature musician for a long time, playing bebop, but then he travelled to Cuba and a new world opened to him. This world, with Afro-Cuban rhythms, was then absorbed into jazz. Jazz is the last synthetic art form: it fuses everything that it comes across, any set of musical knowledge. That?s what it allows development and expansion ? of course through the talents of the musicians that play it. So Hungarian musical traditions must also infiltrate jazz. One must have an open heart, communicate with the audience, look into their eyes and take inspiration from them. Audiences want to forget about cheques, inane everyday life. They want to get lost in the music and not think. If an artist opens his heart, the audience will be happy for 90 minutes or as long as the concert lasts. And they will want this feeling to continue. The intellectual part is another story. One must learn the history of Hungarian music and at the same time learn who one is. If one is persistent enough to play the music, to bring it to life, one also needs a lot of discipline and strength not to be distracted by the internet and other temptations. One must find a vocation and really focus on it.

 

Interviewer: Kornél Zipernovszky