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" I want to be the jazz singer. "
Kurt Elling
Singer
Jazz
Want
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" I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not. "
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" While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed. "
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" I don't want to take it easy. "
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" My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of. "
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" It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band. "
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" You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear. "
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" In New York, the drummers rush for a reason - because there's so much energy crackling through everything in that city and so many collisions at a highly accelerated rate. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" There is an actor's responsibility in presenting the emotional content of the lyrics to an audience. But whether you do that in a straightforward fashion or an ironic fashion or a blase fashion is all about opportunities, and singers are missing opportunities as artists if they don't pay attention to the lyric. "
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Opportunities
Fashion
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" 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. "
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Looking
" I had everything to gain by giving it everything I could. "
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Had
Gain
Giving
" As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people. "
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Front
People
Acting
" It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man. "
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Get
Man
Tired
" Part of my joy as a singer is to give gifts to people, and one way I try to connect to them is to add something in French or German or whatever. "
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Gifts
Joy
" There's a spiritual complement to any attempt at transposing a commitment to humanity through music or art. "
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Any
Art
Commitment
" 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. "
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Me
Decisions
I Can
" You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician. "
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Records
Win
You
" 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. "
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God
Time
Opportunity
" Each of the CDs prior to 'Flirting With Twilight' were more like roller-coaster rides. "
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CDs
Twilight
Like
" I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day. "
Kurt Elling
Listened
Back
Crimson
" I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz. "
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Jazz
Miss
Connection
" 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. "
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Know
Want
Reach
" Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves. "
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Know
Define
Too Much
" We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind. "
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Mind
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" 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. "
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Own
Love
Singing
" I'm a guy who has more slapstick than Joe Cool moments in his day, so I'm not taking myself so seriously. "
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Day
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" You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment. "
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" I was very lucky that more experienced musicians allowed me to caterwaul until I figured out what it was really about. "
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" I hope that I'm also maturing emotionally as a human being as things go on. "
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Hope
Human
Human Being