Sometimes, with vocalese, I'm dealing with something, a great solo from the past, which is so iconic I can't presume to change it or mess with it.
— Kurt Elling
I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close.
You can never predict what the specific shape of your life is going to be, and you won't really know its general shape until, God willing, you're advanced in years and you have the time and opportunity to look back in a coherent way and see what your life was about.
Sometimes people have this notion that improvisation is simply intuitive leaping into the unknown.
Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me.
Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene.
I consider myself very fortunate. I have a beautiful wife who supports my work and is raising our daughter when I'm out on the road.
I'd been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn't been doing well, because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night - it's hard to read Heidegger, but it's especially hard if you're half asleep.
I'm a goof, man.
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 Broenner.
I'm lucky that I enjoy touring as much as I do. I'm not going to make a living just making records.
I try to stick with things that I can sing with honesty.
I like the power and versatility of a big band and how an orchestra can vary the dynamics from very loud to very quiet, and SNJO covers those bases.
While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed.
If I was going to sell out, I would do it for more than 10,000 records.
My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of.
There are incredible musicians around the world.
I remember seeing Tony Bennett on television. He was the only guy in the orchestra who was wearing a white tux, and I thought, 'That would be good. To be the only man on stage in a white jacket.'
I've got enough miles under my belt to know that whatever you envision in your mind, even if it comes true, will only keep a shape in the most general way.
Listening to something without being present is different from being there in the flesh.
Audiences have taught me how to sing better and entertain better.
The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.
I couldn't do what I do without the encouragement and influence of the musicians I played with in Chicago.
If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase.
People just want to dig; they want to dance. They don't want to work all through the night, and neither do I. I like getting 'out there,' but communication should be occurring on more levels than heavy-laden philosophical.
I hope to be at the top of my game when I'm 65 or 70. I don't want to reach my peak at 29. Not that I'm holding back anything, but there's a bunch of junk I don't know.
Romance is one of the things that most countries share, and I've noticed how different communities have their own ways of singing about love and heartbreak.
I don't really have a more intellectualized approach. After the fact, I can sure talk about stuff a lot - but when I make decisions, I really just follow what sounds good to me.
You want to be doing your best work whatever field of the arts you're in because your life's going to be over all too soon, and you have to make the most of it.
I've tried to educate myself in the world and what's beautiful and what has meaning and is lasting. Then I just follow my intuition and see how it fits.
I had everything to gain by giving it everything I could.
I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.
Music is a physical expression that has a physical impact upon the listener. Sound travels in waves through the air. This is not abstract. This is scientific fact. And it makes physical contact with the eardrum... and with the heart... and with the rest of the body.
I travel all the time. And as I go around the world, I try to learn a little something and not just take up all the available air.
You don't show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that's the way jazz has always progressed as an art form.
Salacious? I suppose every once in a while the salacious thing is not a bad thing. It's kind of monochromatic if that's all you do.
With a smaller setting, you have a lot more freedom and flexibility within a given moment, but not necessarily the velocity you have with a big band.
I spend upwards of 200 nights a year on the road.
Chicago is my home. And the way Chicago sounds will always be a part of who I am.
I can't say New York's home, but I've made a lot of friends, and I'm developing a map of what cats are here and where they play, and as a singer, you're always looking for projects that tie things in emotionally and intuitively with your life.
Grammy nominations are certainly pleasant, but you can forget about them and lead a perfectly happy life - provided you have the approval of the musicians you work with.
I'm a guy who has more slapstick than Joe Cool moments in his day, so I'm not taking myself so seriously.
One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.
It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band.
I think I make most of my decisions pretty organically.
I didn't arrive on the scene until after Jaco Pastorius had passed, but 'Three Views of a Secret' is a long-time favourite of mine.
I've worked with a number of big bands, but there's nothing in life like the Basie band.
You learn as much as you can from the people that you work with. That's why you want to surround yourself with the heaviest people that you can possibly get to.
At a certain point, the graduate school thing didn't work out, and that meant I was liberated.
It helps me to learn things in different languages, even if it's just phonetically, and to make myself vulnerable to other audiences by trying to reflect back to them the genius of their own cultures, and to do that, oftentimes, in new jazz settings, new arrangements. It's a way to show respect.
