Elling Meets His Great Expectations
The Age
Friday May 2, 2008
MELBOURNE JAZZ 2008
Kurt Elling; Les Enfants de Django, Regent Theatre, April 30 www.melbournejazz.com THE Melbourne International Jazz Festival - rebranded Melbourne Jazz 2008 - is celebrating its 10th anniversary. It's been a decade since Chicago singer Kurt Elling first performed in Melbourne as a wildly talented and brash 30-year-old. A decade on, his vocal mastery is as astonishing as ever, and his skills as an interpreter more finely nuanced.Wednesday's concert opened with a lively set from Les Enfants de Django - one of two French acts appearing at Melbourne Jazz courtesy of the festival's new association with Jazz a Juan (France's oldest jazz festival). Led by guitarist Samson Schmitt, this tight-knit quartet takes its stylistic cue from the "hot club" of Django Reinhardt, though the addition of electric guitar lent the group a more contemporary edge. Still, the strongest numbers were those that stayed closest to the driving, vigorous style of the band's namesake, the players establishing an effervescent rhythm before trading solos with fleet-fingered agility. But it was Elling that the majority of the crowd had come to see, and his performance more than matched expectations. Accompanied by his wonderfully supportive trio (bassist Rob Amster, drummer Kobie Watkins and long-time collaborator Laurence Hobgood on piano), the singer demonstrated once again why he is one of the world's most admired jazz vocalists. His astonishing four-octave instrument can sink into a lyric with velvety assurance, sustain a powerful falsetto cry, or wrap itself around an intricate vocalese (as on Resolution and A New Body and Soul, highlights of the evening). Best of all, Elling still displays an almost childlike sense of wonder as he explores the outer reaches of his voice, contorting it into unexpected yodels, playful shrieks and grainy, raw-edged shivers. Yet he can also thrust all mischief aside to sing a wistful ballad like Leaving Again with achingly tender restraint. Melbourne Jazz 2008 continues until Sunday.
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