Kurt Elling (1967) can be considered to be the most original jazz vocalist of the past few decades. In 2024, he once again topped DownBeat's International Critics Poll. Elling occupies a permanent place within the lineage of renowned male jazz singers, which runs from Satchmo via Mel Tormé, Jon Hendricks and Mark Murphy, to Elling himself. He is skilled in vocalese and scatting, but also has his own style, the ‘rant’, whereby he improvises with words. On stage, he is incredibly charismatic. His latest musical venture is a tribute to the legendary formation Weather Report, which sees him performing together with the iconic Yellowjackets, who have been active in the fusion genre for upwards of forty years. The band was formed at the end of the 1970s as a 'back-up band', but the members then went away to do their own thing, to amazing results, and their last album Parallel Motion (2022) once again received a Grammy nomination.
