Kurt Elling News

Sarajevo Jazz Festival Opens Sarajevo Sarajevo The 13th annual Sarajevo Jazz Festival opened here on Tuesday with a performance by the US singer Kurt Elling, one of the world's most distinctive male vocalists in jazz today.

It is somewhat disconcerting how few new male vocalists inhabiting the jazz idiom practice their craft with the same degree of genius and virtuosity as saxophonists and other instrumentalists.

Ticket sales for this year's festival were up 35% on last year. Over 1,000 musicians from some 29 countries are playing at over 80 venues around the city in the event, which is now ranked as being in the top three jazz festivals in Europe.

Kurt Elling performs with pianist Lawrence Hobgood at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home to Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Even though jazz singer Kurt Elling is an intellectual, once on the stage or in the recording studio, his music breathes with emotion that stirs the soul.

For much of the current decade, drummer and Chicago native Kobie Watkins - he moved to New York in 2007, then to North Carolina earlier this year - has worked behind some of our city's best-known jazzers, including guitarist Bobby Broom , pianist Ryan Cohan , and singer Kurt Elling .

Last week at this time I was in California for the Monterey Jazz Festival, a three-day celebration of mostly jazz and the longest-running festival of its kind in the world: 52 consecutive years.

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz today announced its 22nd annual Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and all-star Gala Concert will take place at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 11.

Saturday night's doings at the Monterey Jazz Festival were a good reminder that you never know exactly what to expect with improvised music.

It's September already a ' time for my annual opinionated guide to the 2009-2010 performing arts schedules at the city's downtown culture palaces.

The Indy Jazz Festival, presented by Marsh, in Indianapolis announces that current Cole Porter Fellow, Dan Tepfer, has been added to the lineup of this prestigious festival presented yearly.

Jazz Laurence Hobgood with Charlie Haden and Kurt Elling, "When the Heart Dances" . Singer Kurt Elling guests on three of the 11 tracks of pianist Laurence Hobgood's and bassist Charlie Haden's "When the Heart Dances." If you were Hobgood - who has long been Elling's composer and arranger - you would be happy to have the bassist master along, too.

The festival, which runs from October 23-26, will include headline acts such as sax player Pharoah Sanders, drummer Jack DeJohnette and stunning vocalist Kurt Elling.

Updating our item from a couple of months ago, the 2009 Berklee Beantown Jazz Fest is now set for September 18-26. In its 9th year it has expanded to 9 days and 9 stages at locations around the city, from Berklee Performance Center to funky old Wally's. Back in June it was only five days! Saturday the 26th is still the big day, with fun outdoors ...

I think Brett Campbell seriously embarrasses himself as a local music critic when he describes the Mount Hood Jazz Festival as "the area's biggest jazz convocation." It's pretty clear that the Portland Jazz Festival is the biggest and most important jazz festival in the state - this year's lineup alone included Terence Blanchard, Joe Lovano, Dianne ...

The strange, stately beauties of pianist/composer Laurence Hobgood's new Naim Jazz release, When the Heart Dances , begin on the opening track with his funereal transformation of "Que Sera, Sera," the Jay Livingston tune that Doris Day waltzed to the top of the pop charts in 1956.

The strange, stately beauties of pianist/composer Laurence Hobgood's new Naim Jazz release, When the Heart Dances , begin on the opening track with his funereal transformation of "Que Sera, Sera," the Jay Livingston tune that Doris Day waltzed to the top of the pop charts in 1956.

Jazz isn't just alive and well in Indianapolis, it's busting out at the seams! It's a stellar line-up for the Indianapolis Jazz Festival, scheduled for the week of September 19th through the 27th.

Bringing to town such stars as Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Charlie Hunter, Claudia Acuna and Kurt Elling, the 2009 Indy Jazz Fest is gearing up for a multi-day run Sept.

I USUALLY dislike the term vocalist when what people really mean is singer, but in the case of Kurt Elling, who's riding a critical wave with his latest recording, Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman, it fits the man as perfectly as one of his well-tailored suits.