Kurt Elling\u00a0 –\u00a0 Skinner Hall, Vassar College\u00a0 –\u00a0 October 1, 2011<\/p>\n
I kind of miss the old pre-colored-pencil days of dealing with watercolors at the concerts, so I stay alert for opportunities to get back with the wet.\u00a0 I’ve had good luck before at Skinner Hall, especially if I get in the front row and have some roominess in front of me.\u00a0\u00a0 I came prepared for either medium, and got the front row, so there was no stopping me.\u00a0 Toots not especially happy with the seating arrangement, as it involved looking upwards to the stage and she has the disadvantage of not having my height.\u00a0 So the back players (especially drums & piano) not very visible to her.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure quite who to compare vocalist Elling to; maybe in a sense Betty Carter.\u00a0 Instead of a distinctive style, he does a lot of little different things, he’s got the pipes and range for all of them.\u00a0 He started off unaccompanied for a tune, so that’s a statement right there.\u00a0 He lets his players stretch out, and gets around to go (literally) face-to-face with them, goading them with scat mongrelized with percussive vocal sound effects into some interesting dialogue action.\u00a0 Except not so much with his pianist Laurence Hobgood, who’s been with him long enough so that their rapport is second nature.<\/p>\n
Several technical problems associated with painting remain to be solved.\u00a0 One is that this paper (I’m breaking it in, or vice versa) comes as a tablet pad, and the top sheet cannot be separated from the rest without running a blade around the perimeter, something I’m unlikely to do while sitting in the audience.\u00a0 Second, the paper has so much tooth (rough surface texture) that the autograph pen I use does not smoothly dispense ink to form the type of crisp signature that I favor, especially with some of these hasty and stylized flourishes.\u00a0 And the paper size is just a smidgen bigger than the scanner platen, so the illumination for the scan has got to have some unevenness (wow, what a word that turns out to be!) to deal with. It’s always something.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/parkergambino.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Kurt-Elling-v2-signed-jpg.jpg\" "\\"Kurt-Elling-v2-signed-jpg\\"")
<\/a>Kurt Elling<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Clark Sommers<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>John McLean<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kurt Elling\u00a0 –\u00a0 Skinner Hall, Vassar College\u00a0 –\u00a0 October 1, 2011 I kind of miss the old pre-colored-pencil days of dealing with watercolors at the concerts, so I stay alert for opportunities to get back with the wet.\u00a0 I’ve had … Continue reading