Kurt Elling Quotes

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Kurt Elling

Profession : Musician

Birth : November 2, 1967

It's a lovely thing to have people in any circumstance appreciate your work.

Kurt Elling

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.

Kurt Elling

I really thought I was gonna have a straight gig. But these jazz musicians put their arms around me time and again and said, 'Hey, young fella, you're one of us. Come with us.' That's a big deal when you're young and looking for your way in the world.

Kurt Elling

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

Kurt Elling

We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal.

Kurt Elling

Chicago has a burly, action-oriented but still self-assured and relaxed confidence to its stride. The city has a lot of wide-open space and all the possibilities that suggests. There's a lot of horizontal grandeur here.

Kurt Elling

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.

Kurt Elling

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.

Kurt Elling

We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind.

Kurt Elling

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.

Kurt Elling

I've tried to learn as much as I can about the great jazz singers to understand what makes them important, vital artists, but there is always something more to learn.

Kurt Elling

Why limit yourself to one discipline or field of study?

Kurt Elling

Each of the CDs prior to 'Flirting With Twilight' were more like roller-coaster rides.

Kurt Elling

My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable.

Kurt Elling

I try to sleep as much as I can. I drink a lot of water. I practice consistently and just try to be ready for the gig.

Kurt Elling

The singer is always an ambassador of music.

Kurt Elling

I want to be the jazz singer.

Kurt Elling

A lot of the commercial world wants to bank in on the cachet that jazz brings.

Kurt Elling

I don't want to take it easy.

Kurt Elling

You don't just let a guy drop off the earth and not come together with everybody who knew him and loved him and respected him. You try to do it the right way.

Kurt Elling