Passion
World, the fifth Concord album (eleventh overall) from vocalist Kurt Elling,
lives up to its title on both counts. Scheduled for release on June 9, 2015 on
Concord Jazz (international release dates may vary) it is indeed his most
“worldly” album to date, as Elling casts his net far and wide, from Brazil to
Ireland, Germany to Spain, Scotland to Cuba to Iceland. And it is indeed all
about passions – the forces that shake our souls. As one of the busiest touring
jazz artists, Elling has encountered these passions around the world; he has
observed how the same depth of feeling is shaped in myriad ways by each unique
culture through which it filters. The result is an album vibrant with diversity
and variety, and at the same time a single-minded celebration of what makes us
all human. In terms of its conceptual scope and its breadth of influences,
Passion World is the most ambitious project yet from the preeminent male
vocalist in jazz.
It is also
Elling’s most “star-studded” album, featuring a small battalion of guest
collaborators working in tandem with the singer’s much-traveled quintet
(keyboardist Gary Versace, guitarist John McLean, bassist Clark Sommers,
drummer Kendrick Scott). The guests include the brilliant veteran trumpeter
Cuban émigré Arturo Sandoval; the widely lauded young vocalist Sara Gazarek;
German trumpet star Till Brönner; French accordion virtuoso Richard Galliano;
the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and its founder-leader, saxophone savant
Tommy Smith; and the world-renowned WDR Big Band and Orchestra from Germany,
featuring pianist Frank Chastenier.
For most
of us, “passion” conjures love, at its most dramatic and exotic. “These are by
and large compositions about romance,” says Elling, a GRAMMY® winner in 2009
(and ten-time GRAMMY® nominee during his career). “Romance is one of the things
that most countries share, and I’ve noticed how songs from those countries play
into or draw from national identities. Yes, we all have heartbreak, but it
differs wherever you go. So the nature of songs I have performed in France, for
instance, have reflected the French thing of being cool when romance is done;
remember, the French came up with the word ‘nonchalance.’ That’s versus the
overwrought, almost threatening response to a broken heart that you find in
lyrics from Cuba or Latin America, and versus the kind of statuesque and
heroic, almost operatic, nature of the broken heart in Italy or Germany.”
But
sometimes, the heartbreak stems from circumstances beyond the bubble that
surrounds two lovers, and Elling nods to that as well: witness the poignant
“Where The Streets Have No Name,” U2’s ode to lives lost in war and politics,
newly arranged by guitarist John McLean. Witness also “Bonita Cuba,” born of a
fortuitous ocean-liner booking. On the last evening of a recent Caribbean jazz
cruise, Elling heard Arturo Sandoval playing this melody from his adjacent
cabin. “I said, ‘Arturo, that’s so sad; is that a tradition of yours, to play
down the sun?’ But he said, ‘No, I was thinking about Cuba, and about friends
back home I haven’t seen in decades. I was thinking about my mother and father;
I got them out, and they always thought they were going to go home – but
they’re buried in America.’” Elling asked if he might put lyrics to this
melody, and “Bonita Cuba” took shape. Recorded at Sandoval’s house, with the
trumpeter’s rhythm section, “The song redeems some small portion of the vast,
lost expanse of 90 miles that continues to separate Sandoval from his homeland,
and gives the sadness room to sing,” in the words of liner-note writer Andrew
Gilbert.
Many of
the other songs on Passion World also have noteworthy origins. Elling learned
“Loch Tay Boat Song” back in college, when he spent a year abroad studying at
Edinburgh University, and it has percolated in his mind ever since. On perhaps
the loveliest track on the album, the devastating “Where Love Is,” he sings a
James Joyce poem that blends abject misery and pure joy, in a melody newly
composed by ex-Dubliner Brian Byrne. Elling discovered “After The Door,” a Pat
Metheny song originally titled “Another Life,” when he heard it as “Me jedyne
niebo,” sung by Polish vocalist Anna-Marie Jopek (whose husband wrote the
Polish lyrics). As a prelude, Elling worked with the noted bassist and arranger
John Clayton to craft “Verse,” the brief plaint that also serves to introduce
the entire album. The durable “La Vie En Rose” carries another Elling lyric,
written to a Wynton Marsalis solo on that tune, from a recording that featured
Marsalis in concert with Richard Galliano. And Galliano’s own composition
“Billie,” dedicated to Billie Holiday, inspired the vocalist to write lyrics as
well, for the tune now titled “The Tangled Road.”
It was in
fact Elling’s desire to work with Galliano that prompted the initial public
performance of the “Passion World” concept, for a Jazz at Lincoln Center
concert in 2010. “I needed a vehicle that suited the two of us,” Elling
explains; “I already had a couple things in French, and a couple things in
Portuguese, from Brazil; that was the start of it. Then I wanted to learn some
of Galliano’s tunes, to potentially write new lyrics for them – to honor his
contributions as a composer – and then I realized how many countries I hadn’t
reached out to yet. So as we continued to tour, I continued to look for new
material.
“These are
all pieces that I gathered to perform as either encores or as what I think of
as ‘charmers’ – songs from each local situation that would allow me to extend a
hand,” says Elling, whose international performances are indeed famous for his
inclusion of regional color and the infusion of native languages. “Part of my
joy as a singer is to try to give gifts to people; and one way I try to connect
to them is to add something in French, or German, or whatever. It’s the one
time during a performance where people see me being very vulnerable in their
context, instead of them feeling vulnerable in ours. And if I mess it up, they
seem to appreciate that I tried.”
On Passion
World, Elling stretches further afield than on any of his previous efforts,
placing his enormous talent in a context that includes but does not restrict
itself to jazz, per se. Most of the songs on Passion World do not come from the
jazz canon, and because of this, the album may be especially welcoming to new
listeners. “I’m just following my curiosity,” he allows. “It’s a beautiful
thing to have time in the world, as a singer and as a musician, to make friends
with people of the musical caliber of a Tommy Smith, an Arturo Sandoval, a
Richard Galliano, a Till Brönner. These guys are fully jazz musicians, and they
are pulling themselves closer to jazz from various regional contexts – and
pulling jazz into those contexts, because jazz has the flexibility to move
across borders.”
Elling
fans will note that on Passion World, the singer eschews the high-flying scat
improvisation that stands among his great contributions to jazz in this
century, and that remains a vital component of his artistic arsenal. But as he
reminds us, “One doesn’t have to scat to be a jazz singer. And in this case, I
think the spirit of improvisation – more than the spirit, actually – is present
in what I’m doing. The actual display of virtuosity is for people like Smith
and Sandoval to display. On this record, I’m just trying to sing real good.”
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