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Kurt Elling

I saw a post asking about male jazz singers. Kurt Elling was the top one, so I'm listening to him. He was born in 1967 in Chicago. His father was the musical director at church and he was into music with the family from the time he can remember. Basically he didn't have any training until after college, and he sang in choirs in high school and college. He toured Europe in college with his choir. He had good conductors. He learned from experience, hanging out in clubs. He was encouraged to sit in. He says he had plenty of strikeouts too. 

I know online music has killed the music industry, perhaps, perhaps not, because I listen to a lot more music with instant gratification. To get a fraction of a cut of the advertising seems unfair, but then again people used to want to get their records played on the radio. 

Looks like he's in Poland now, then he goes to Washington. Birdland 1/8-11, then Orlando, Miami, Tucson, LA. A gig in Baton Rouge, Baltimore, then Ann Arbor. Seems like he travels a lot. 

It's $75 per ticket at Birdland in NYC, cheapest ticket, you could pay $107, to see him at Birdland in January. And there are only bar seats left, so you can only get the cheapest tickets for Wednesday January 8th. Then there are $23 additional fees to buy online. Basically $100 for the crappiest seat. His latest on vinyl is $24 before shipping and handling. CD is $13.70. I suppose I'm a cheapskate. I could see him for $100 live, or I could bet a handful of CDs and learn his music over time, with a kind of perfection that recording have. 

He has 17 CDs as leader, and appears on many others disks. 

One of the consequences of the money being sucked out of things is prices go up. Live has always been of more value than recording. Recordings were ways of getting your music out there, but live is where it's at. I suppose if I come into money somehow, I'll see more live jazz. Last live jazz was 10/2/23. Watching Smalls is pretty cool too, on YouTube, but it's better to be there. 


Links:

Personal Website

Spotify

Wikipedia

YouTube: Kurt Elling on His Early Musical Training

Brief clip on twitter.

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