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" You don't just let a guy drop off the earth and not come together with everybody who knew him and loved him and respected him. You try to do it the right way. "

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" Out in L.A., things relax even further than they do in Chicago. There's such a looseness to it, and there's a potentially refreshing advantage to that. "

Kurt Elling

Things

Refreshing

Relax

" It must be a hellish thing to know what's possible in music, to be hearing things all the time and not have an appropriate outlet for them. "

" Sometimes people have this notion that improvisation is simply intuitive leaping into the unknown. "

" I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close. "

" My goal is to be really incredible by the time I'm 70. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm a guy who has more slapstick than Joe Cool moments in his day, so I'm not taking myself so seriously. "

" I had everything to gain by giving it everything I could. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Kurt Elling

Belonging

Sense

" I was very lucky that more experienced musicians allowed me to caterwaul until I figured out what it was really about. "

Kurt Elling

Lucky

" Why limit yourself to one discipline or field of study? "

" 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. "

" If you're going to be transparent, you're going to have to let the music come that wants to come. "

" I'm lucky that I enjoy touring as much as I do. I'm not going to make a living just making records. "

" You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician. "

" 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. "

" We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind. "

" Chicago is my home. And the way Chicago sounds will always be a part of who I am. "

" I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking. "

" At a certain point, the graduate school thing didn't work out, and that meant I was liberated. "

" I haven't been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles? "

" If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase. "

" I hope that I'm also maturing emotionally as a human being as things go on. "

" My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable. "

" I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz. "

" 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. "