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2021 GRAMMY AWARD WINNER KURT ELLING FEATURED FOR THE 10TH COLTRANE JAZZFEST Kurt Elling, winner of the 2021 GRAMMY Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, will be the featured performer for day-two of the 10th John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival on Sunday, Sept. 5, 2021. The current win is for the 2020 album “Secrets Are the Best Stories.” The New York Times declared him to be “the standout male vocalist of our time.” His skilled vocals place Elling’s work in the rare position of receiving consecutive, multi-year recognition from fans, the recording academy and critics alike, garnering an unprecedented fourteen-year run atop the Down Beat MagazineCritics Poll and eight Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) awards for “Male Singer of the Year.” He has received 11 GRAMMY Award nominations, winning his first in 2007 for the live recording “Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman.” Elling, a native of Chicago, began singing in Windy City clubs at night while studying at the University of Chicago Divinity School by day. He made his recording debut on Blue Note Records with “Close Your Eyes” in 1995. That album not only secured Kurt Elling his first GRAMMY nomination but showcased many of the aspects that came to define his sound: a mix of jazz standards and original compositions, poetry and music, and Elling’s seeming natural affinity for vocalese. A past vice president of the Recording Academy, he cites Tony Bennett and the Woody Herman Band as early musical influences. Elling has collaborated with jazz legends and classical orchestras; created multi-disciplinary theatrical works for the Steppenwolf Theatre and the City of Chicago; served as Artist-in-Residence for the Singapore and Monterey Jazz Festivals; and explored the fertile common ground between jazz and poetry, working with the words of Allen Ginsberg, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda and others. The John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival will be held Sept 4-5, 2021 in Oak Hollow Festival Park, High Point, NC. The yearly celebration of jazz and blues music honors Coltrane, a High Point, NC native son, who graduated from William Penn High School, now Penn Griffin School of the Arts. |
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