Ravinia 2021 - Issue 1

“Music is an artform of emotion, moving around the molecules, and getting into the bloodstream of the listener—and of the performer. Jazz affected me in peculiar way, and it called to me.” F OR GRAMMY-WINNING , internationally renowned jazz impresario—and Chicago native—Kurt Elling, Ravinia Festival’s famed “music under the stars” have aligned into his lucky stars. In 2009, Elling won his first Gram- my Award for the celebrated jazz homage Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hart- man . And Elling performed at Ravinia Festival that same summer. Then, earlier this year, Elling won his second Grammy for the poetic, yarn-spinning Secrets Are the Best Stories, featuring Danilo Pérez , and fatefully he again returns to Ravinia on July 13 after a 12- year hiatus. Coincidence or celestially determined? Elling (a former divinity student) baptizes Ravinia’s new, intimate, outdoor Carousel Stage on the North Lawn with jazz guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter. The two will debut new music from their daring new album Super- Blue , which drops in September. Musically, Elling’s boyhood burg of Rockford may be best known for Rock Hall of Famers (and Ravinia veterans) Cheap Trick, but Kurt Elling’s 25-year jazz career clearly can battle with the Tricksters for bragging rights. Elling has earned awards and acco- lades from around the globe (includ- ing 14 Grammy nominations), played with many music legends (among them Branford Marsalis, blues pioneer Buddy Guy at the White House in 2016, and the late Marvin Hamlisch at President Obama’s first State Dinner), and dominated both the critics’ and readers’ polls of DownBeat magazine as “Male Vocalist of the Year” for more than 20 years. There must be some- thing in that northern Illinois soil. Elling was born into a melodic family, the son of the Kapellmeister of a Lutheran church. He sang in the choir, played various instruments, and continued choir in high school. Elling discovered and devoured jazz during his college years and pursued a master’s degree before dropping out to channel his ambitions in jazz. He learned his trade and fed his sonic passions at Chicago jazz mainstays like Milt Trenier’s and the famed Green Mill Jazz Club. Since 1995, Elling has progressed his career impressively, praised by the New York Times as “the world’s standout male vocalist of our time.” Not bad for a Rockford choir boy. After more than a decade living in New York, Elling and his family have returned to Chicago. Speaking by phone from his home in late May, it’s obvious Kurt Elling is a committed, socially conscious artist and one of jazz’s truest troubadours and astute ambassadors. Make it nice, play it clean, jazz man. Have you remained creatively active during the pandemic? I did concerts from my front porch for the neighborhood and audiences online. We did streamed performanc- es live from the Green Mill, including a reworked version of The Big Blind, my work-in-progress, which is a noir, Broadway-style show. I also made a new record, SuperBlue, with Charlie Hunter—that’s what we’ll be playing at Ravinia. They’ll be one of the first au- diences to hear it. I’ve just been trying to keep my head on straight. This had to be the longest stretch you haven’t performed for a live audience. It’s been a challenge, for sure. Yes, you’re right, this has been the longest stretch. I realized right away how much I missed it. I wanted to work again on my craft and collaborate with other musicians—to communicate to larger audiences about what was going on and have that psychic release and share it with them— that I certainly missed. You recorded SuperBlue during the pandemic using email. That must have been a new process for you. Exactly. I still haven’t met two mem- bers of the band in person! The band put together rhythm tracks with likely chord changes and sent them to me through email. I had to figure out a melody and lyrical ideas and lay in a bunch of tracks on my end. Then we sent them back and forth a couple of times. I’m looking forward to finally meeting those cats. We’re going to have a good time. Did this “email songwriting” feel detached for you? Jazz music has to have a spontaneous aspect—it can’t be if you’re sending files back and forth. This isn’t a jazz project, but it is musical. It’s an inter- esting experiment, and a great explo- ration, and I’m happy with what came out of it. But as soon as you take the spontaneous aspect out of it, it doesn’t have that “breathing” interaction you have with other people. How would you describe SuperBlue ? Charlie Hunter and I have known each other for a boatload of years, and though our music is different, there is a middle ground, and that’s what we explored with [Butcher RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 1 – JULY 23, 2021 18