The magic of Kurt Elling comes to Cork Jazz Festival


One of Kurt’s many collaborators is Fred Hersch, another of the headliners in this year’s Guinness Cork Jazz Festival. Kurt sang

on Fred’s 2005 album Leaves Of Grass, a collection of Walt Whitman’s poems set to original music. When asked if he could make a nobel call on Fred to play any piece of music Kurt has heard him play, straight away Kurt recalled: “Fred recorded a version of the ‘Star Crossed Lovers’, a beautiful Billy Strayhorn Duke Ellington composition. He did it so profoundly and so wonderfully. I would have to make that the one I’d announce for him to play.”
For a songwriter who writes projects for other people as well as himself, he still starts off imagining them for solo performance: “Usually, I think of myself first when writing a song, but I also do much larger work such as The Big Blind, which is an old-time radio drama.”

Kurt Elling plays Cork City Hall on Saturday, October 26, at 8pm.