Declared by The New York Times as “the standout male vocalist of our time”, Kurt Elling – a master of vocalese – is widely accepted as the natural heir to jazz pioneers Eddie Jefferson, King Pleasure and Jon Hendricks, modernizing the jazz vocal tradition and breathing new life into old favorites for today’s audiences.
“I feel happiest and most ‘myself’ when I’m singing. An audience member once told me I looked ‘zen’ on stage and that’s pretty much how I feel! I love the fact that it is such an expressive avenue through which to communicate and tell stories”.
After sell-out album launches in Melbourne in late 2015, The SURFACE Project and Tom Barton/Diego Villalta have allied to bring their rock and electronic influenced brand of modern jazz to audiences across Australia with a double-bill tour.
“Charlotte Mclean is one of the best emerging vocal talents on the Australian jazz scene. A beautiful tone, great expressive range and an adventurous improviser”.
“There are times when the magic flows, when the musos are all in the right place together and when you get that wonderful ‘virtuous cycle’ going with the crowd, who are loving being there, loving what you are doing and that just takes you to another level. It doesn’t always happen like that, but when it does, you feel like you are absolutely doing what you were born to do.”
Mike Nock explains that “We’re learning the original arrangements as a starting point to play the music from our current perspective. This is turning out to be a bigger challenge than I originally thought, but I’m finding it an incredibly interesting process and a huge journey of self-discovery, as the music contains most of the concepts I’ve spent my lifetime exploring ever since. It may be true one can never go home again – but maybe that’s because we really never leave it!”
“I think whilst duo performance is, exposing, it’s also very liberating, as you have a lot more space to play and work with.”
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“It will be great to reunite with one of my earliest musical collaborators, Steve Newcomb. On that night, the performance will be like two old pals catching up after a few years, each one filling the other in on what they’ve been up to (in this case, musically) in the intervening time.”
Christian Windfeld: “[our music] is real-time composing and the free-flow of ideas and emotions – an extremely democratic and very accessible music that will calibrate your ears and tune you into the sounds that constantly surround you”.
