Kurt Elling
Man In The Air

There is something enigmatic in the soaring ascents of Kurt Elling's melodies. Something that returns to the listener uncertainty, unease, and at the same time, strength. The typical slow songs of crooners seem, finally, to be harnessed (or freed) by his voice. Those perfect little toys seem to shed the artificiality they had been accumulating for some time now. Because it is undeniable that the standards, those pearls of the great American songbook, have become like splendid rooms of a 4-star hotel. Rooms without memory. Anonymous rooms due to the many (unskilled) guests (interpreters) to whom they have been given with the same unconscious lostness as a Madame Bovary.

This issue does not concern Elling. Elling stands well above the young singers who emulate the singer whose contacts with the mafia across the ocean were certainly not just magazine stories. Elling takes the notes of John Coltrane ("Resolution" picked from A Love Supreme), Herbie Hancock ("Alone and I" transformed into "A Secret I") or Joe Zawinul ("A Remark You Made" transformed into "Time to Say Goodbye") and takes them to new grounds thanks to a voice now roaring and leonine, now sweet and swaying.

Then there is the hypnotic "Higher Vibe" with an electric piano capable of making even inorganic minerals cry (does the distinction between organic and inorganic still make sense?). And the reinterpretation of "Never My Love" by the Association (by the Addrisi Brothers) in a poignant and sublime version. A song that was so light for all that was known about it before Kurt took it by the hand. How many are capable of taking a little song and making it an intense "love song"?

When Elling sings, he seems so comfortable that he appears to be dancing sometimes on tiptoe, sometimes kicking the air as if he were Nureyev brought back to life in the form of a voice. In the composition that gave the title to the entire album ("The Man In The Air"), Elling sings "The man up in the air has a vision of everywhere. Recollected and finally connected. And harmonized", and he seems to confess an impossible dream.