A Quote by Kurt Elling

Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene. — © Kurt Elling
Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene.
It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is "The Judge."
I really like the Chris-R scene and of course the "you are tearing me apart Lisa" scene. The reason I love the Chris-R scene is because we worked really hard to finish it. It's not just that though, it brings people together. Everyone is one the roof together by the end of the scene. You see the perspectives of the different characters. I feel like with all the connections in this scene that the room connects the entire world
I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have, that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging, and recasting and looking at our modern history.
I can play piano, and I write everything on piano, but I don't really feel like a piano player, necessarily.
I play piano, and I was really, really obsessive about playing piano in high school. I don't know if that's nerdy, but I definitely locked myself in the room and was playing jazz. I was 14. I guess that's kind of cool, actually.
Inspiration is a really hard thing to describe, but it's something that triggers your brain, like the first time I heard a certain guitar player that I loved or the first time that I saw a monster or the first time that I saw anything that really was an epiphany for me. It just stays with you your whole life.
I don't like the piano player music of the movies, the Michael Nyman, and sometimes that piano music makes me puke. It's not really romantic. It's just trying to get your Pavlovian juices flowing because it's a technique now.
I had an affinity for music and could play anything I heard on the piano, but I wasn't scholastically advanced in any way. It was more of a habitual tendency. I would work on weekends at piano bars playing jazz when I was an art student, but the music wasn't mine - it was covers: everything from Radiohead to really old jazz. But other than that, the only training I had was piano lessons from when I was nine until I was eleven.
Gymnastics, for me, gave me a lot of self-pride: that drive to want to be great at something for myself. But it also gave me a sense of appreciation toward God. Now that I'm getting older, I really appreciate the talents God gave me. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.
'The Daily Show' was like my family. We had dogs in the office every day, all day. It was just such a warm, beautiful, sweet experience for me. Choosing to leave the show was so hard because I really, really loved everybody there, and I loved what it gave me and the platform it gave me.
When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me.
The Hit Stick is a tremendous invention. It really gave you control as a defensive player because most of the time, 'Madden' is such an offensive game. But the Hit Stick really gave you the opportunity to shine on defense for the first time.
My days at the Studio sustain all the work that I do today. They gave me a sense of legacy, a sense of belonging, and a community that made me believe in my talent and vocation.
You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone's voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.
I've never felt anything that moves me as much as my piano. I'm an emotional player. I don't really like people. I prefer my piano to people. It's totally reliable and it's alive. I can hear what it's saying.
I really want to bring ensemble playing back to the forefront - not just for me, but for everyone in jazz. When you have a group, a true co-op group, you can really heighten the possibilities of all the treasures of jazz.
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