Kurt Elling at the Ravello Festival

On Wednesday, July 18, at 9:30 pm, Kurt Elling and his quintet will be on the Belvedere of Villa Rufolo accompanied by the talented trumpeter Marquis Hill with the Chicagoan's latest project, The Questions.
Kurt Elling has received countless awards and accolades over a fourteen-year period. He won the Downbeat Critics' Choice Award for Best Vocalist of the Year; he was named "Male Vocalist of the Year" by the Jazz Journalists Association eight times in the same twelve-year span. Each of his ten albums has received a Grammy Award nomination. A few days ago, he was also recognized as Best Male Vocalist of 2018 by Downbeat (one of the most important magazines in the industry).
The Washington Post, in one of its scathing reviews, couldn't have been clearer, quoting Elling incontrovertibly: "Since the mid-1990s, no other singer has been as courageous, dynamic, or original as he is. With the voluptuous flow of his voice, his lyricism, his vocal agility, and his sense of living music as a mission, Elling embodies the true creative spirit of the jazz repertoire today." Born in 1967, a baritone timbre, a silky stride, and an instantly captivating charisma on stage—these are certainly the credentials of Kurt Elling, hailing from Chicago and unanimously considered the most influential male singer of the last twenty years for his technique and generosity. Heir to great masters like Jon Hendricks and Mark Murphy, his majestic knowledge of the fundamentals of jazz is admired, even more so than his ability to excite, which he combines with a great curiosity for all the beauty that can come from other forms of music: from Earth Wind and Fire to Joe Jackson to King Crimson, Tom Jobim, Wayne Shorter and Pat Metheny, there is almost no area that Elling hasn't touched with his art, the official debut of which took place in 1995 with the album Close Your Eyes.
At the Ravello Festival, Elling, strongly supported by the director of the jazz section, Maria Pia De Vito, will be accompanied, as mentioned, by his new quintet, joined by the prodigious young trumpeter Marquis Hill, to perform pieces from The Questions, the vibrant new album just released by Okeh/Sony in co-production with Branford Marsalis, saxophonist and recent favorite of the Ravello Festival crowd. The album, inspired by a reading of the Bohemian-born Austrian playwright Rainer Maria Rilke, features other celebrated standards from all eras and backgrounds, including gems by Bob Dylan and Peter Gabriel. For Hill, not yet thirty, the turning point in his career undoubtedly came in 2014 with his victory at the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition, but two years earlier, the young Chicagoan had also won the International Trumpet Guild Jazz Competition. Even as a music student, Hill was a recurring name in the jazz scene in his hometown and surrounding areas, both as a sideman and leading his own bands. As a leader, he has released four albums on Skiptone, and one, his latest, on Concord. His music reflects the moods, sounds, and traditions of Chicago's South Side, where he grew up, along with the new trends a young musician absorbs daily.