The Questions, with its soulful melodicism, profound urgency
and vigorous swing, earned Elling and his band widespread acclaim. Most
importantly, it engaged audiences around the world in the most vital challenges
of this staggering historical moment. Now, The Questions LIVE captures that
experience through an intimate, compelling performance recorded during the
band’s most recent European tour.
A special gift from Elling to his fans, The Questions LIVE
arrives just in time for the holidays, a time for families and friends to
gather together and celebrate the communal spirit of the season. That spirit
comes vividly to life as Elling convenes an intimate London crowd for a short
set featuring expanded versions of four songs from The Questions as well as a
new piece based on Ben Webster’s bristling “Did You Call Her Today.”
“I’m hoping to not only address this moment of craziness in
the world, but also to lift people up about it,” Elling explains. “I’m not a
protest singer, though there’s a lot to protest. It’s tough for me to sing from
anger, though there’s a lot to be angry about.”
The Questions LIVE opens, as did the original album, with
Elling a cappella, reciting the stirring opening lines of Dylan’s “A Hard
Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” As he relates to the audience afterwards, the song’s
litany of poetic horrors feels “as current as it was when it was written.” He
goes on to introduce the “hard-won wisdom” of poet Franz Wright, whose words
were set to music by pianist Stu Mindeman for the philosophical “A Happy
Thought.”
“Politics, death… it’s going pretty good so far,” Elling
jokes before turning his attention to that most ever-present of mysteries,
love, on guitarist John McLean’s warm arrangement of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
“I Have Dreamed.” From finding love to maintaining it, “Every Day You’re Away”
adds some romantic advice gleaned from many years as a traveling musician to
Webster’s “Did You Call Her Today.” It is, as Elling points out, “an everyday
question,” but one that’s just as important to ponder as the big questions
posed by this repertoire.
“Maybe the questions themselves are the answers,” Elling
muses before concluding this moving set with “Endless Lawns,” which pairs Carla
Bley’s music with Elling’s own lyrics, adapted from a poem by Sara Teasdale. It
sends the audience, and now listeners around the world, home on an optimistic
if wistful note, countering the darkness of the day’s headlines with a welcome
dose of hope.
“In the face of this unfolding catastrophe in front of us,”
Elling says, “I at least want it known that I’m on the side of compassion,
grace and fellowship – not on the side of division, fascism and ignorance.”
That sentiment is amply expressed, certainly, in Elling’s
lyrics and performance, which is heartfelt but full of humor, bristling with
passion yet ultimately brimming with faith in humanity. But it’s there as well
in the collective spirit of jazz, the inspired interactions between Elling and
his bandmates: guitarist John McLean, bassist Clark Sommers, drummer Adonis
Rose, and, joining the regular band for this European jaunt, pianist and
organist Jim Watson. Each one of these gifted musicians are given plenty of
space to explore these heady questions in their own voices live on stage.
In the current political climate, Elling says, “the approach
of jazz itself is a form of protest. The collegiality, the mutual support, the
democratic; everybody gets a say and if you take a single member out there’s an
essential ingredient missing. It’s not a complete community until everybody’s
in their right and mutually supportive place.”
For Elling, that place is on stage, finding that night’s
answers in communion with fellow musicians and rapt audiences. “I’m trying to
give the music and the audience the best that I can,” he says, “and be true to
the example of the cats who came before me.”
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