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Close Your Eyes (Kurt Elling Album)
''Close Your Eyes'' is the debut studio album by Kurt Elling, released in 1995. At the 38th Grammy Awards Elling was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for ''Close Your Eyes''. Reception The Allmusic review by Michael G. Nastos awarded the album four stars, and said "Chicago vocalist Elling pushes the envelope, challenging listeners and his musicians with beat poetry, ranting, and his Mark Murphy-ish singing. There's quite a bit of dramatist/actor in Elling, although the romantic in him is also pretty prevalent...There's clearly more in store for Elling as he matures, but this is as auspicious a vocal jazz debut as the world has heard.a worthy statement from Elling, who shows yet again that vocal jazz can be more than just easy listening" Track listing # " Close Your Eyes" (Bernice Petkere) - 6:06 # "Dolores Dream" ( Wayne Shorter, Kurt Elling) - 6:32 # "Ballad of the Sad Young Men" (Tommy Wolf, Fran Landesman) - 6:17 # "(Hide the) Salomé" (Elli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt Elling
Kurt Elling (born November 2, 1967) is an American jazz singer and songwriter. Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Rockford, Illinois, Rockford, Elling became interested in music through his father, who was Kapellmeister at a Lutheran church. He sang in choirs and played musical instruments. He encountered jazz while a student at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. After college, he enrolled in the University of Chicago Divinity School, but he left one credit short of a degree to pursue a career as a jazz vocalist. Elling began to perform around Chicago, scat singing and improvising his lyrics. He recorded a demo in the early 1990s and was signed by Blue Note Records, Blue Note. He has been nominated for ten Grammy Awards, winning Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, Best Vocal Jazz Album for ''Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman, Dedicated to You'' (2009) and ''Secrets Are the Best Stories ''(2021). Elling often leads the ''Down ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dave Brubeck
David Warren Brubeck (; December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck's work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasting rhythms, Metre (music), meters, and tonality, tonalities. Born in Concord, California, Brubeck was drafted into the US Army, but was spared from combat service when a International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Red Cross show he had played at became a hit. Within the US Army, Brubeck formed one of the first racial integration, racially diverse bands. In 1951, Brubeck formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet, which kept its name despite shifting personnel. The most successful—and prolific—lineup of the quartet was the one between 1958 and 1968. This lineup, in addition to Brubeck, featured saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello. A U.S. Department of State-sponsored tour in 1958 featuring the band inspir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laurence Hobgood
Laurence Hobgood (born 1959) is a contemporary jazz piano virtuoso, composer, arranger, producer, lyricist and educator. Perhaps best known for his twenty-year collaboration with vocalist Kurt Elling, Hobgood has had a varied and dynamic career. In addition to his prowess at the piano he's identified by many as a key player in the imaginative updating of the "American Songbook", particularly in his arranging for vocalists; his stylized re-imagining of both classic songbook repertoire and more recent artists' work (Carole King; Earth, Wind & Fire; Paul Simon; Burt Bacharach; Sting; U2, etc.) has had a far-ranging influence within the jazz world and beyond. Early life Born Dec. 23, 1959, in Salisbury, North Carolina, Laurence is the son of Burnet Mclean and Jane Bishop Hobgood. His father was the director of the small but thriving Theater Department at Catawba College. Soon the family moved to Ithaca, New York, where his father earned his Ph.D., then again to Dallas, Texas, in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Arrangement
In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orchestration in that the latter process is limited to the assignment of notes to instruments for performance by an orchestra, concert band, or other musical ensemble. Arranging "involves adding compositional techniques, such as new thematic material for introductions, transitions, or modulations, and endings. Arranging is the art of giving an existing melody musical variety".(Corozine 2002, p. 3) In jazz, a memorized (unwritten) arrangement of a new or pre-existing composition is known as a ''head arrangement''. Classical music Arrangement and transcriptions of classical and serious music go back to the early history of this genre. Eighteenth century J.S. Bach frequently made arrangements of his own and other composers' pieces. O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singing
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir. Singers may perform as soloists or accompanied by anything from a single instrument (as in art song or some jazz styles) up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Different singing styles include art music such as opera and Chinese opera, Indian music, Japanese music, and religious music styles such as gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues, ghazal, and popular music styles such as pop, rock, and electronic dance music. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged, or improvised. It may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual as part of music education or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolph Green
Adolph Green (December 2, 1914 – October 23, 2002) was an American lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs for some of the most beloved film musicals, particularly as part of Arthur Freed's production unit at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, during the genre's heyday. Many people thought the pair were married, but in fact they were not a romantic couple at all. Nevertheless, they shared a unique comic genius and sophisticated wit that enabled them to forge a six-decade-long partnership that produced some of Hollywood (film industry), Hollywood and Broadway theatre, Broadway's greatest hits. Biography Green was born in the Bronx to Hungary, Hungarian Jewish immigrants Helen (née Weiss) and Daniel Green. He was the youngest of three sons and had two older brothers, Louis (circa 1907-?) and William (circa 1910-?). After high school, he worked as a runner on Wall Street while he tried to make it as an actor. He met Comden throu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Betty Comden
Betty Comden (May 3, 1917 - November 23, 2006) was an American lyricist, playwright, and screenwriter who contributed to numerous Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century. Her writing partnership with Adolph Green spanned six decades: "the longest running creative partnership in theatre history." The musical-comedy duo of Comden and Green collaborated most notably with composers Jule Styne and Leonard Bernstein, as well enjoyed success with ''Singin' in the Rain'', as part of the famed " Freed unit" at MGM. Early life Betty Comden was born Basya Cohen in Brooklyn, New York in 1917, the younger child of Leo Cohen (originally Astershinsky), a lawyer, and Rebecca ( Sadvoransky) Cohen, an English teacher. Both were Russian immigrants and observant Jews. She had an older brother, Nathaniel ("Nat"), born . Basya "attended Erasmus Hall High School and studied drama at New York University, graduating in 1938," according to ''The New York Times''. In 1938, mutual f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jule Styne
Jule Styne (; born Julius Kerwin Stein; December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was an English-American songwriter and composer best known for a series of Broadway musicals, including several famous frequently-revived shows that also became successful films: ''Gypsy,'' '' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,'' and '' Funny Girl.'' Early life Styne was born to a Jewish family in London, England. His parents, Anna Kertman and Isadore Stein, were emigrants from Ukraine, the Russian Empire, and ran a small grocery. Even before his family left Britain, he did impressions on the stage of well-known singers, including Harry Lauder, who saw him perform and advised him to take up the piano. At the age of eight, he moved with his family to Chicago, where he began taking piano lessons. He proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old. Career Before Styne attended Chicago Musical College, he had already attracted the attention o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language.Biography: Rainer Maria Rilke 1875–1926 Poetry Foundation website. Retrieved 2 February 2013. His work has been seen by critics and scholars as having undertones of , exploring themes of subjective experience and disbelief. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry and several volumes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. In the 1970s, Hancock experimented with jazz fusion, funk, and electro styles, utilizing a wide array of synthesizers and electronics. It was during this period that he released perhaps his best-known and most influential album, ''Head Hunters''. Hancock's best-known compositions include " Cantaloupe Island", " Watermelon Man", " Maiden Voyage", and " Chameleon", all of which are jazz standards. During the 1980s, he enjoyed a hit single with the electronic instrumental " Rockit", a collaboration with bassist/producer Bill Laswell. Hancock has won an Academy Award and 14 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for his 200 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorenz Hart
Lorenz Milton Hart (May 2, 1895 – November 22, 1943) was an American lyricist and half of the Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart. Some of his more famous lyrics include " Blue Moon", " The Lady Is a Tramp", "Manhattan", "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", and "My Funny Valentine". Life and career Hart was born in Harlem, New York City, the elder of two sons, to Jewish immigrant parents, Max M. and Frieda (Isenberg) Hart, of German background. Through his mother, he was a great-grandnephew of the German poet Heinrich Heine. His father, a business promoter, sent Hart and his brother to private schools. (His brother, Teddy Hart, also went into theatre and became a musical comedy star. Teddy Hart's wife, Dorothy Hart, wrote a biography of Lorenz Hart.) Hart received his early education from Columbia Grammar School and entered Columbia College in 1913, before switching to Columbia University School of Journalism, where he attended for two years. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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