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Kurt Elling
Summary
Kurt Elling (born November 2, 1967) is an American jazz singer and songwriter.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Rockford, Elling became interested in music through his father, who was Kapellmeister at a Lutheran church. He sang in choirs and played musical instruments. He encountered jazz while a student at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. After college, he enrolled in the University of Chicago Divinity School, but he left one credit short of a degree to pursue a career as a jazz vocalist.
Elling began to perform around Chicago, scat singing and improvising his lyrics. He recorded a demo in the early 1990s and was signed by Blue Note. He has been nominated for ten Grammy Awards, winning Best Vocal Jazz Album for Dedicated to You (2009) and Secrets Are the Best Stories (2021). Elling often leads the Down Beat magazine Critics' Poll. He had a longtime collaboration with pianist Laurence Hobgood, leading a quartet that toured throughout the world.
Kurt Elling was born in Chicago, Illinois on November 2, 1967, the son of Henry and Martha Elling. His interest in music started with his father, who was Kapellmeister at a Lutheran church. Elling attended elementary school at St. Paul Lutheran School in Rockford, and throughout his early years, he sang in choirs and played violin, French horn, piano, and drums. During his middle school years, Elling remembers watching Tony Bennett and the Woody Herman band on television and imagining what it would be like to sing with a band. Growing up, Elling sang in the classical style, learning counterpoint from the motets of Johann Sebastian Bach.
At Rockford Lutheran High School, in Rockford, Illinois, Elling continued to sing in the choir: "When it was undeniably uncool and geeky and all that, to be the choir, I did it anyway, because it was reliably beautiful, and it was rewarding, and it gave me gifts of experience and friendships." One of these experiences was that of singing the National Anthem with the high school madrigal choir, "Joyful Sounds" under the direction of Joyce Kortze in front of his first large crowd of over 40,000 people.
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