★★★★★
There's nothing like a good cover band to while away an evening. You know all the songs, the band is always in tune, and singing along is perfectly acceptable. Now, when the cover band is as good as Kurt Elling, it's even better. Elling is a minor demigod of the jazz world, nearly every disc he's released was Grammy nominated, and he's taken that little gold Victrola home once...
- www.ink19.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Manhattan's most famous music address remains best known for the brief period during the late 1950s and early '60s when young songwriters like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Barry Mann and Burt Bacharach were churning out the pop and R&B; hits that defined the era. But Kurt Elling, never one to take the narrow view, argues that the Brill was a vital music hub far longer, from the 1930s to well beyond the heyday of doo-wop and bubblegum...
- jazztimes.com
2012-12-16
★★★★★
In sheer talent and bravado, there's not a more remarkable jazz singer out there than Kurt Elling. His instrument, a baritone to tenor beast that is pliant, rich, and utterly athletic, has no peer in jazz. And he has been making a series of records of great imagination--collaborations with his long-time pianist Lawrence Hobgood that take on the jazz repertoire in interesting ways...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-12-11
★★★★★
The Brill Building holds a special place in popular music history, not just because of the songs crafted within its walls, but also because of what it has come to represent. The ideal of the Brill Building is associated with songs that soundtrack the lives and loves of millions of people around the world. Singer Kurt Elling's tribute to that ideal, 1619 Broadway: The Brill Building Project, crackles with life as it connects with the emotions these songs engender...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2012-11-14
★★★★★
This album's title refers to the address of the Brill Building, New York's famed songwriting factory. sets out to cover several obvious selections from its resident writers in the heyday of popular song, alongside a handful of less-predictable ditties. Elling time-warps these tunes into a different era of jazz fusion (perhaps the 1980s), the band often employing the amplified versions of guitars, bass and keyboards. And Elling's individualist vocal reinterpretations are well worth hearing...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2013-04-23
★★★★★
Track review of "On Broadway" Where female jazz vocalists are plentiful, male jazz vocals exist in vast minority. With Mark Murphy in twilight, Kurt Elling has few peers in the realm of male jazz vocals where sheer inventiveness and muscularity are concerned. Elling's facility is one so great and his musical vision so clear that, at least for the time being, no one can touch him...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2012-09-20
★★★★★
Kurt Elling The Gate Concord Music Group 2011 It's amazing how small age differences can impact on the music that resonates in our youth?experiencing it after the fact being so different than living in its time...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2011-07-18
★★★★★
It's not even close. Kurting Elling is far and away the boldest, most talented and consistent male jazz singer working today. Since his Blue Note debut in 1995, Close Your Eyes, Elling has presented a compelling case for the jazz vocal tradition. Elling combines the sonic richness of Sinatra, the beat adventure of Mark Murphy, and the modern cool Cassandra Wilson. He meshes hip and slick, and it's starting to look like he's never going to make a bad album...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-03-14
★★★★★
This pop-angled album from dazzling Chicago singer Elling, produced by Bonnie Raitt and Rolling Stones collaborator Don Was, features tracks like King Crimson's Matte Kudesai and Earth, Wind and Fire's After the Love Is Gone. But his improv ingenuity consistently sidesteps cliches, and The Gate is far from a bland set of adult-contemporary classic-pop covers...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2011-03-14
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