Kurt Elling

I'd been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn't been doing well, because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night - it's hard to read Heidegger, but it's especially hard if you're half asleep.

While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed.

I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close.

Music is a physical expression that has a physical impact upon the listener. Sound travels in waves through the air. This is not abstract. This is scientific fact. And it makes physical contact with the eardrum... and with the heart... and with the rest of the body.

My goal is to be really incredible by the time I'm 70.

With a smaller setting, you have a lot more freedom and flexibility within a given moment, but not necessarily the velocity you have with a big band.

The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.

You don't just let a guy drop off the earth and not come together with everybody who knew him and loved him and respected him. You try to do it the right way.

It helps me to learn things in different languages, even if it's just phonetically, and to make myself vulnerable to other audiences by trying to reflect back to them the genius of their own cultures, and to do that, oftentimes, in new jazz settings, new arrangements. It's a way to show respect.

My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of.

I hope to be at the top of my game when I'm 65 or 70. I don't want to reach my peak at 29. Not that I'm holding back anything, but there's a bunch of junk I don't know.

I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day.