The Beautiful Day (OKeh Records)
Kurt Elling
Released in 2016
All About Jazz Four-and-a-half-Stars Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nyvl3rnBz_oFYlbXqO594urS8vu0jlIrI
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3kGxAL9kbsUAkqY9S9mRzI?si=jF_75th2RI-AQDOTOB990Q
About:
With The
Beautiful Day, Kurt Elling has pulled off something close to a Christmas
miracle. He has taken a secular approach to a religious holiday, without shying
away from a spiritual message. He has taken Christmas – a day of the year that
holds deep meaning and memories for him – and embraced it in all its Christian
imagery and lore. But from these specifics he has chosen to amplify the holy
day’s universal themes of wonder, mystery, goodwill and hope. And he has done
so with such deftness and generosity that people of all faiths can share in
those concepts.
“In the Western World, whether you’re a Christian or not, Christmas has some
kind of seasonal relevance to you,” Elling said, shortly after completing this
album. “You can’t really escape the holiday – even it’s just coming at you on
television. I would hope as many people as possible have a positive connotation
of Christmas – and that when they put this record on, they feel included in its
energy. This record is not meant to be a reinforcement of dogma. At the same
time, I?m not afraid to say the word ‘Christmas’: it’s the name of the holiday.
“I knew I didn’t want to make a ‘religious’ record, just as I knew I didn’t want to make something musically cheap or just for commerce – or even just a standard, swinging Jazzy Christmas. If anything, I’m trying to expand my consciousness and embrace the goodness of the season. For me, Christmas is a time of consideration, of pondering mysteries. It’s a dark time of year, both figuratively and literally, here in the northern hemisphere. It’s a time when the snow quiets everything within its blanket, and of solitude, because people tend to rush back indoors – leaving the poet, like the poor, out on the streets alone. It’s a time when I can go out on a stormy night, as I like to do, and listen to the wind through the trees.” This experience is now memorialized in Elling’s lyric “The Michigan Farm”, set to the music of the 19th Century Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.
Elling has investigated matters of the soul and of faith throughout his career. He’s done so through his choice of repertoire; through his inventive infusions of poetry, some of which date back to the 13th century; and through his own writing (such as his lyrics to John Coltrane’s epic spiritual quest A Love Supreme). Filling an entire album with such matters required a different effort. Making that album an inclusive ode to Christmas raised the bar.
“It’s a funny thing, going in to make a Christmas record – a strange, exhilarating, challenging thing – especially when your father was a church musician, as mine was, and so much of your childhood was based around the church calendar and preparing music for religious observances. For me, the holiday comes enriched with a lot of beautiful personal memories. It also comes freighted with the knowledge that millions of other people around the world carry their own such memories; and not all those memories are of happy occasions. So it was daunting to take on something with so much history and resonance. I hope that with this material I found a sweet spot. The music has meaning; it’s inclusive; it’s seasonal, by which I mean the actual season of winter in North America; and it has a little bit of searching weight to it – avoiding, I hope, the usual seasonal cliché.”
The Beautiful Day is definitively a jazz record, but the material draws from several genres – from traditional carols to the modern soul of Donny Hathaway and the folk-rock of Dan Fogelberg, with several delightful songs written by Leslie Bricusse for the lesser-known 1970 film musical Scrooge. The arrangements come courtesy of Elling himself in collaboration with newcomer pianist Stuart Mindeman and longtime guitarist John McLean. The band?s longest-serving member, bassist Clark Sommers, arranged the catchy “Christmas Children.” And Kendrick Scott cloaked the “Little Drummer Boy” in a New Orleans street beat. “We Three Kings” gets an assist from the pen of Tori Amos. And the next generation – Elling’s preternaturally poised daughter Luiza – bows winningly on the title track.
At several points, a misty shadow of “Good King Wenceslaus” (a tale of benevolence) reappears in the program. “It’s a lovely story, but the lyrics are immovably time-bound,” Elling explained. So rather than insert the song itself, he took “little mirror images: smoky phantoms from a slant angle, where the lighting of the Christmas tree is blurry and in your side vision,” and used them as a recurring motif. These not only bind the album, they also provide “a settling influence to keep the listener in a steady contemplation.”
Nothing captures the essence of The Beautiful Day better than “Some Children See Him,” a song specific to Christianity yet dismissive of any clannish appropriation. “It’s a deceptively simple song about how the central image of Christmas overflows the boundaries we try to construct,” Elling said. “I believe that all races – and even genders – rightly see themselves in the Holy Infant. The spirit of Christ transcends any representative face we may imagine. One cannot ‘own’ the image of Christ, just as one cannot ‘own’ Christmas itself.” The human capacity for a quiet transcendence, born within each of us, is a concept at the foundation of virtually every creed, and ought to resonate for people of every faith tradition. That Elling can share it without diluting an ounce of his own belief is the reason this Christmas album transcends Christmas. (And the music soars; you can imagine happily playing The Beautiful Day in the heat of summer.) This may not qualify as an actual miracle. But in troubled times, it comes close enough.
Track Listing:
1. Sing a Christmas Carol (Leslie Bricusse) 04:34
2. Wenceslaus (Image I) (Traditional) 01:27
3. Star of Wonder (Terre Roche) 02:03
4. We Three Kings (Tori Amos / John Henry Hopkins, Jr.) 06:33
5. Christmas Children (Leslie Bricusse )04:32
6. Wenceslaus (Image II) (Traditional) 00:52
7. Some Children See Him (Alfred Burt / Wihla Hutson) 07:13
8. Little Drummer Boy (Katherine K. Davis / Henry Onorati / Harry Simeone) 02:46
9. Wenceslaus (Image III) (Traditional) 01:28
10. The Michigan Farm [Cradle Song, Op. 41/1] (Kurt Elling / Edvard Grieg) 03:03
11. The Snow Is Deep on the Ground/Snowfall (Archie Randolph Ammons / John Hollenbeck / Kenneth Patchen / Claude Thornhill) 06:35
12. Same Old Lang Syne (Dan Fogelberg) 06:19
13. This Christmas (Donny Hathaway / Nadine McKinnor) 04:32
14. The Beautiful Day (Leslie Bricusse) 02:28
Personnel:
Kurt Elling: vocals, percussion
John McLean: acoustic guitars, electric guitars
Stuart Mindeman: piano, electric keyboards, Hammond B-3
Clark Sommers: bass
Jill Kaeding: cello
Jim Gailloreto: soprano saxophone
Tito Carrillo: trumpet
Kendrick Scott: drums
Kalyan Pathak: percussion
Luiza Elling: vocals
Producer: Kurt Elling
Co-producer: Stuart Mindeman
Executive-Producer: Bryan Farina
Recording Engineers: Vijay-Tellis Nayak and Charles Martinez
Mixing: Vijay-Tellis Nayak, Steven Rodby and Bryan Farina
Mastering: Rich Breen
Cover Art: Alex Couwenberg
Art Direction: David Weed
Photography: Elliot Mandel
Review:
Forget the standard old tidings of good cheer, the same old set of swinging Christmas standards, and the sugary holiday treats that lack vitality and real sustenance. Kurt Elling certainly paid little mind to them when he was putting together this gem of a program. Instead of taking the road more traveled when it comes to holiday trips, Elling takes back roads and detours. And as with most of his projects, that makes all the difference.
For his first Christmas album, Elling does what he does best, embracing the art of possibility and enriching the topic(s) at hand with sophistication and sincerity. That’s clear from the very first, as he quickly tips his hat to a bevy of Christmas favorites (in forty-five seconds) before leaving them behind for the cheery “Sing A Christmas Carol”—one of three selections here that were plucked from Leslie Bricusse’s score for the 1970 film musical Scrooge. It’s a merry introduction to what turns out to be one of the most gratifying holiday albums to emerge in years.
While Elling’s programming savvy likely led to his decision to open in such an upbeat realm, his roaming artistic ear keeps him from staying put there. On first departure he creates a spectral body—a hazy sound painting, if you will—based on “Good King Wenceslaus.” It’s the first of three such variations that appear throughout the album. He then moves into a pensive state for a brief and extremely moving take on Terre Roche’s “Star Of Wonder,” delivers a powerful and mesmerizing take on “We Three Kings” that owes as much to his band’s performance as it does to his own delivery, and takes a sly swinging stroll through Bricusse’s “Christmas Children.”
An easy waltzing “Some Children See,” a swampy “Little Drummer Boy,” further reflections on “Good King Wenceslaus,” a marriage of Elling’s lyrics and Edvard Grieg’s music, and a smartly-rendered take on Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne” follow, further illustrating how one man’s voice and personality can serve as the ties that bind seemingly dissimilar material. Elling’s collaborators—most notably, pianist Stu Mindeman, guitarist John McLean, bassist Clark Sommers, drummer Kendrick Scott, and saxophonist Jim Gailloreto—also work wonders in bringing everything together harmoniously under one roof.
Elling remains a man of poetry, passion, and purpose here, regardless of whether he’s giving a soulful nod to Donny Hathaway, investing himself in the music of John Hollenbeck and the words of Kenneth Patchen, wishing and dreaming through a vocal duet with his daughter, or visiting any manner of other people and places. This album is truly a breath of fresh wintry air.
Dan Bilawsky (All About Jazz)
