Kurt Elling Quotes

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Kurt Elling

Profession : Musician

Birth : November 2, 1967

Grammy nominations are certainly pleasant, but you can forget about them and lead a perfectly happy life - provided you have the approval of the musicians you work with.

Kurt Elling

If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase.

Kurt Elling

I consider myself very fortunate. I have a beautiful wife who supports my work and is raising our daughter when I'm out on the road.

Kurt Elling

I can't say New York's home, but I've made a lot of friends, and I'm developing a map of what cats are here and where they play, and as a singer, you're always looking for projects that tie things in emotionally and intuitively with your life.

Kurt Elling

I couldn't do what I do without the encouragement and influence of the musicians I played with in Chicago.

Kurt Elling

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.

Kurt Elling

Chicago is my home. And the way Chicago sounds will always be a part of who I am.

Kurt Elling

Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me.

Kurt Elling

I spend upwards of 200 nights a year on the road.

Kurt Elling

Audiences have taught me how to sing better and entertain better.

Kurt Elling

With a smaller setting, you have a lot more freedom and flexibility within a given moment, but not necessarily the velocity you have with a big band.

Kurt Elling

Listening to something without being present is different from being there in the flesh.

Kurt Elling

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.

Kurt Elling

I've got enough miles under my belt to know that whatever you envision in your mind, even if it comes true, will only keep a shape in the most general way.

Kurt Elling

I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close.

Kurt Elling

You don't show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that's the way jazz has always progressed as an art form.

Kurt Elling

I remember seeing Tony Bennett on television. He was the only guy in the orchestra who was wearing a white tux, and I thought, 'That would be good. To be the only man on stage in a white jacket.'

Kurt Elling

Sometimes, with vocalese, I'm dealing with something, a great solo from the past, which is so iconic I can't presume to change it or mess with it.

Kurt Elling