Nightmoves

We Say...

Review by Britt Robson

For better and only occasionally for worse, vocalist Kurt Elling is an Artist with a capital A. That means making a transcription of a Keith Jarrett piano solo on “Leaving Again,” composing lyrics to it, and melding it in a medley with the Frank Sinatra song, “In the Wee Small Hours.” It means setting Theodore Roethke’s 1953 poem, “The Waking,” to music in a gorgeous vocal/bass duet with Rob Amster. It means writing new lyrics for the seminal jazz standard, “Body and Soul” as part of a ten-minute tour de force of vocal/vocalese.

Pull back from these individual pieces and you see that Nightmoves is a dusk-to-dawn concept album, with a prevailing mood of muted moonlight. Elling ranges from grafting a translation of the 13th-century poet Rumi on to a Von Freeman sax solo of Duke Ellington’s “I Like the Sunrise” — to performing a relatively straight rendition of the Guess Who’s 1969 nugget, “Undun.” If all this sounds literally too precious for words, know that Elling seems to sense the exact point where he’d crossing the line and putting on airs, and steps back. That’s why he’s a perennial winner (including 2006) of both the Downbeat Critics and Readers polls as Best Male Vocalist, and a seven-time Grammy nominee.

Besides, for his first disc in four years (and his debut for the Concord label), the guy the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed the most flamboyantly creative singer in a decade is perhaps more restrained than ever, relying on his longtime trio (led by pianist Lawrence Hobgood) to marinate a program heavy on somber ballads. It’s well known that Elling is a protégé of singer Mark Murphy, right down to his early taste for beatnik culture and rhythms. But Nightmoves feels more akin to Abbey Lincoln, especially when Elling lets his purring baritone slide into woozy minor-key ruminations. It’s telling that the lone failure here — a cover of “Tight,” an overtly playful tune associated with Betty Carter — siphons away the sass and stuffs it with ersatz grace. It needs more Attitude.