Inside South Orange, NJ’s SOPAC auditorium this Thursday, April 3, 2025 evening, elegant people who love jazz ready themselves for a concert entitled Kurt Elling Celebrates Weather Report.
Kurt Elling is a jazz singer/songwriter who has been nominated for 17 Grammy awards and has twice won the “Best Vocal Jazz Album” award. A crooner with a four-octave range, Elling is known as a writer and performer of vocalese, a style of jazz singing where the performer sings recognizable lyrics to pre-existing jazz melodies and solos.
Weather Report was a jazz fusion band which starred, among others, keyboardist Joe Zawinul, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and bassist Jaco Pastorius. One of the defining modern jazz groups of the ’70s and early ’80s, Weather Report received multiple Grammy Award nominations including a win for “Best Jazz Fusion Performance,” in addition to receiving DownBeat’s “Best Album Award” five times in a row.
The lights dim and the crowd cheers as keyboardist Julius Rodriguez, guitarist Mike Moreno, bassist Essiet Okon Essiet, and drummer Marcus Finnie take their places on stage along with vocalist Kurt Elling.
Opening with a vocalese arrangement of the Wayne Shorter jazz fusion piece, “Elegant People,” Elling starts off by vocalizing in his strong baritone voice, “Hey/No matter what people say…,” prior to effortlessly singing up, down, and around the tune’s skipping melody.
Deftly accompanied by Essiet Okon Essiet on bass and Julius Rodriguez on keyboards, Mike Moreno is featured on a lyrical guitar solo and Marcus Finnie plays a rhythmic drum solo before Elling holds out a long note on the coda to avid cheers and applause.
Elling welcomes tonight’s crowd, stating, “Ah, beautiful, elegant people — thanks for coming out on a school night!” Rapping like a beat poet, Elling exclaims, “We’re gonna juice you with some joy juice!” as he and the band shift into a vocalese version of Jaco Pastorius’ “Continuum.” On this fusion piece’s a cappella intro, Elling shows off his dynamic range singing “It isn’t easy/You’ll have to show some spine” before the band joins in and Julius Rodriguez plays a lighting fast bebop-style piano solo prior to slowing down for Elling to conclude, “Be your own work of art.”
Music lovers hoot and holler and Elling praises the talent of Weather Report’s Jaco Pastorius noting that his innovative style of bass playing opened up “a gateway to imagination.” After mentioning Pastorius’ courage in the face of life’s challenges, Elling wonders, “How are we going to distill our essence into the greatest explosion of joy?” prior to proposing, “We’re gonna have to work together on that one!” and suggesting, “Maybe that’s why we teach our children ‘The Itsy-Bitsy Spider’ — the fight song of the human race!” Here, Elling waltzes into “3 Views,” a 3/4-time jazz tune where he poses the question in song, “What if every road leads the same way home?”
Mike Moreno renders a yearning electric guitar solo, Marcus Finnie adds precision cymbal and snare rolls, and Rodriguez is spotlighted on a keyboard solo which cascades downwards before he and Elling engage in a piano/voice duel to enthusiastic cheers and applause.
Bassist Essiet Okon Essiet incorporates a snippet of Weather Report’s “Birdland” as he plays the intro to Joe Zawinul’s “Black Market.” After Essiet adds chords to the mix on this world music piece, Elling enters the fray rapidly scat-singing syllables and inspiring cheers from the crowd for his sizzling vocal solo.
Rodriguez follows up by channeling Joe Zawinul as he’s featured on the synthesizer while Elling plays tambourine and Essiet and Finnie percolate on bass and drums.
Elling talks about how he obtained permission from the various members of Weather Report — notably Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, and the family of Jaco Pastorius — to create lyrics to their instrumental compositions prior to sharing a personal story about meeting Joe Zawinul at a Los Angeles party.
Elling confesses that in creating the vocalese lyrics to “Current Affairs,” instead of using the title as a story-starter, he wrote the lyrics about his daughter who, in the process of emerging from childhood, “wanted to hold on, yet wanted to go on.” Accompanied by the sound of Rodriguez’s keyboard, Elling croons, “Once you walked/Through your time/In a kind of shyness/Knowing life/Would spin and wind/In paths of shading vines,” on this vocalese arrangement of Zawinul’s dynamic Weather Report ballad.
Rodriguez’s fingers fly on a synthesizer solo as the ensemble joins in and plays with ever increasing dynamics and music lovers in the crowd respond with enthusiastic whistles and cheers.
Elling and Co. follow up with a vocalese interpretation of Wayne Shorter’s upbeat and percussive jazz fusion piece, “Palladium,” where Elling cries, “Let me know the way!” before Rodriguez plays a funky keyboard solo and Elling and Finnie engage in a verbal/percussion “drum-off” to enthusiastic cheers.
The crowd responds with a standing ovation and Elling exclaims, “Thank you so much! Take care of each other!” Following a group bow, Elling and the ensemble exit the stage but soon return and Elling says, “I’m so happy that you could all come out tonight,” to which a fan calls out, “So are we!”
After joking, “Thank you for your passionate reception of our shenanigans up here!” Elling counts off an encore vocalese version of Joe Zawinul’s “A Remark You Made.” On this lovely ballad, Mike Moreno renders an emotional guitar solo and the musicians give a dynamic performance which concludes when Elling sings, “It’s time to say goodbye,” to inspired cheers and applause.
To learn more about Kurt Elling, please go to kurtelling.com. For information on future performances at SOPAC — including The Glenn Miller Orchestra on May 15, Avery Sunshine on June 6, and Darlene Love on June 12 — please go to sopacnow.org.
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