November 11–18, 1999

critic pick|jazz

Kurt Elling

Where have all the scat singers gone? Once the very firmament of the jazz vocalfoundation, few new scat practitioners have risen to replace babble-tongued stars like Ella Fitzgerald and Cab Calloway.Which means that Kurt Elling is not only a gifted improvising vocalist, but he is one of the few singers doing thatbip-boppity-zoppity-zop thing with any focus and dedication these days.

It’s a vocational isolation that has worked well for Elling — in a mere four years of recording since his1995 debut Close Your Eyes, Elling’s mixture of finely controlled Sinatra/Nat Cole song styling, mellifluouspoetry and adventurous "vocalese" scat expeditions has gathered a pocketful of kudos from critics and fansalike, quickly moving him from the tiny clubs to the big stage at UPenn’s Annenberg Center.

Elling’s act is not a strictly historical bag, either. While he’ll often sail way out into a vocalese riffduring a song like "Freddie’s Yen For Jen" (from his ’98 Blue Note disc This Time It’sLove), he places melodic babblelogues and improvised lyrics inside an innocuous contemporary musical setting,resulting in a hallmark sound. By inserting a placid framework around the kind of unbridled scat attack that Callowaywould break into with a jumpin’ big band, Elling ends up sounding nearly avant-garde, when he’s really justplying old-fashioned moves without the original context.

On Saturday, expect Elling to mix honey-smooth renditions of standard vocal showcases like "My FoolishHeart" and "Prelude to a Kiss" with more audience-challenging material like "She’s Funny ThatWay" (in which he translates a Lester Young sax solo into vocalese) and Beat-bopping selections from Elling’sconceptual performance piece "Encounter Without Prejudice — a critical exploration of Allen Ginsberg and theBeats."

—Brian Glaser

Kurt Elling, Sat., Nov. 13, 8 p.m., Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut St., $15, $20 and $25, 215-898-3900.