K U R T E L L I N G P A S S I O N W O R L D

T H E V E R S E 1 : 3 8A F T E R T H E D O O R 3 : 5 5L O C H T A Y B O A T S O N G 7 : 0 2S I T E C O N T A R A 5 : 3 5L A V I E E N R O S E 8 : 1 2B O N I T A C U B A 6 : 3 7W H E R E T H E S T R E E T S H A V E N O N A M E 4 : 5 1T H E T A N G L E D R O A D 7 : 1 8 V O C Ê J Á F O I À B A H I A ? 2 : 1 8N I C H T W A N D L E , M E I N L I C H T ( L I E B E S L I E D E R W A L Z E R O P . 5 2 , N O . 1 7 ) 7 : 0 0W H O I S I T ( C A R R Y M Y J O Y O N T H E L E F T , C A R R Y M Y P A I N O N T H E R I G H T ) 4 : 4 9W H E R E L O V E I S 5 : 1 3

Produced by Kurt Elling

Co-Produced by Chris Dunn and Bryan Farina

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I started gathering pieces from different

countries in different languages strictly to

perform as ‘charmers’ or encores on the

road. It was my desire to perform with

Richard Galliano for Jazz At Lincoln Center

in 2010 that led to the development and

arrangement of these songs as a full concert

outing. My work with Laurence Hobgood

on that show and over the last twenty years

helped prepare me to produce this finished

album on my own. I can’t thank John

McLean, Kendrick Scott, James Shipp,

Clark Sommers, and Gary Versace enough

for encouraging me to keep going and for

giving me their best work.

Arturo Sandoval’s open-handedness and

enthusiasm gave me the chance to help bring

“Bonita Cuba” and to record with this great

hero of music. The musical generosity of Till

Brönner, Frank Chastenier, Richard Galliano,

Sara Gazarek, Alan Pasqua, Tommy Smith,

Karolina Strassmayer, and Francisco Torres

gave Passion World its wonderful diversity of

solo voices. Passion World would have had

much, much less “world” within it without

the WDR Funkhausorchester & WDR Big

Band, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra,

and Arturo Sandoval’s rhythm section (John

Belzaguy, Johnny Friday and Dave Siegel).

To these great musicians, and to those whose

voices are included exclusively through

their writing or arranging—Michael Abene,

Brian Byrne, Bryan Carter, John Clayton,

Phil Galdston, Laurence Hobgood, Marcin

Kydrynski, Pat Metheny, Florian Ross, and

Josh Nelson—I offer my sincere and heartfelt

gratitude.

Chris Dunn and Bryan Farina were invaluable

partners while working through the logistics,

doing loads of the heavy lifting on my

behalf and allowing me to focus on musical

developments. Chris Allen, Tim Tuthill, Lim

Wei, and Roberta Findlay made my time at

Sear Sound easy and a creative pleasure,

as they always do. Seth Presant and Paul

Blakemore once again proved their priceless

worth in the mixing and mastering studios.

Thank you Tommy Smith and Lucas Schmid

for making the recordings we created

together available and for your ongoing

collaboration. Thanks to my language

advisors—Enzo Capua, Catina DeLuna,

Anna Maria Jopek, Carol Loverde, Christian

Schmitt and Francisco Torres.

Thanks to my friends at Concord Music

Group: Joel Amsterdam, Glen Barros,

Kim Bilbrew, Elizabeth Boettcher, Larry

Bole, John Burk, Mike Gillespie, Craig

Hammond, Mary Hogan, Bryan Lazar, Jason

Linder, Golda McCormack, Rick Nuhn, Kajo

Paukert, Nick Phillips, Andrew Pham, Brian

Schuman, Paddy Spinks, Ashley Stagg, Mike

Wilpizeski, Jill Weindorf and Mark Wexler.

Additional thanks for the success of this

project go to Bob Belden, Andy Gilbert,

Marcus Lovett, Pat and Susie McBain, Darryl

Pitt, Antonio Ponti, Roberto at Michiko

Rehearsal Studios, Brad Rubin, Neil Tesser,

Gianni Valenti at Birdland Jazz Club, Anna

Webber and John Hellings at Frank Stella.

For encouragement and advice on the

broader scope of issues, I am grateful to

Dean Balice, Guy Barker, Tim Evans, Herb

Graham Jr., Bruce Lundvall, Larry Moss,

Wülf Muller, Robert Podesta, Jonathan

Stuart, Don Was and Fred Zollo.

Even more thanks to the greater KE, Inc.

constellation of partners: Mitch Attas,

Richard Connolly at Circumstantial

Productions/CJK Design, Dave Jemilo at

the Green Mill, Peter+Trudy Johnson-Lenz

at Pathfinding Smarter Futures, Katherine

McVicker at Music Works International,

Michael Morris, Janet Morton at Santa

Barbara Travel, Chuck Ortner, Michael

Brettler at Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Scott

Southard and Jeanna Disney at International

Music Network and the horde at 1iTurtle.

Thanks and love to Martha Elling, Rick

Carney, Tony and Sondra Karman, Billy

Gerstein and Woodward Bennett, Peter

Giron and Nicole Pagliardini, Judy Hanson,

Alyosha, Sarah and Kepler Mackenzie-

Petzall. Overwhelming thanks and love to

Jennifer and Luiza Elling.

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The album you hold in your hands is a map, but Passion World isn’t a geographical location. Rather, this disparate collection charts the veiled fears, unspoken confessions, indelible memories and rapturous desires found in every human heart. Drawing on material from more than a half-dozen countries, Kurt Elling searches out the particular sensibilities of different cultures, creating an emotionally charged mosaic; one that amplifies a profound array of universal experiences. This is what great art does. While it’s impressive to hear Elling throw himself into so many different traditions, eclecticism isn’t the point or agenda here. What binds the album together, aside from Elling’s emotional commitment to the material, is the enviable cohesion and versatility of his collaborators. Time in the trenches and on the road bind together a working American band that features the impeccable musicianship and textural resourcefulness of guitarist John McLean, pianist Gary Versace, bassist Clark Sommers and drummer Kendrick Scott. Time in the music itself ties Elling and his band to musicians like France’s virtuoso accordionist Richard Galliano and Germany’s trumpet star Till Brönner. In many ways, the first piece encapsulates the way that Elling reaches far beyond the usual sources for material. Starting with a Pat Metheny creation he re-discovered through the work of Polish singer Anna Maria Jopek, Elling added his own new lyric in English and commissioned John Clayton to create the music to a new and haunting introduction “The Verse.” By way of easing a much remarked-upon personal transition, he moves directly into an arrangement created for the band by his long-time collaborator Laurence Hobgood, so that Elling’s first album after the end of their two-decade partnership opens with their collaboration. The end result is a strikingly dramatic piece, part art song and part dreamscape. Elling gathered many of the songs in Passion World through the course of his travels, and they come freighted with the backstory of their discovery.

The “Loch Tay Boat Song” is a traditional piece Elling learned while backpacking through the Highlands while a college student, not long before he turned to jazz as his true creative outlet. The emotionally striking recording features Scotland’s saxophone master Tommy Smith and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra in a fresh harmonic setting from the young German arranger Florian Ross. “Bonita Cuba” came about via an accident of proximity when Elling found himself in a cabin adjacent to Arturo Sandoval on a Caribbean jazz cruise. From his adjoining balcony, Elling listened to the Cuban trumpet legend playing an impossibly sad melody over and over again.

When asked whether the piece was simply an ode to the setting sun or something more, Sandoval explained that he was inventing a tune to comfort himself. “I was thinking about Cuba, and about friends back home I haven’t seen for decades,” he said. “I was thinking about my mother, who always thought she’d go home. Instead, she died in America, and is buried there.” The lyric Elling and Phil Galdston composed complements Sandoval’s heartbreaking melody perfectly. The song redeems some small portion of the vast, lost expanse of 90 miles that continues to separate Sandoval from his homeland, and gives the sadness room to sing. Just when Passion World seems to brim with tears, Elling brings the effervescent Los Angeles jazz vocalist Sara Gazarek to the fore for a duet on Dorival Caymmi’s ode to the beauties of his homeland, “Você Já Foi à Bahia?,” a brief blast of pure sensuous joy. (After all, if you really want to samba, you should go to Bahia!) And then it’s back to luxurious tears, with Michael Abene’s ravishing arrangement of Brahms’ “Nicht Wandle, Mein Licht” for the WDR Funkhausorchester and WDR Big Band. There aren’t many artists who can pull off this kind of tonal and cultural juxtaposition, but Elling does so with sincerity and grace. In other moments Elling works in the well-worn tradition of jazz alchemy, turning familiar pop songs into vehicles for improvisation, as in the sinewy version of the hit from Ireland’s U2, “Where The Streets Have No Name,” and in the infectious refrain from Iceland’s Björk, “Who Is It?” (Both arrangements are by the invaluable guitarist John McLean.) Kurt Elling isn’t making any naive panglossian claims with Passion World. Rather, he approaches the material with wide-eyed marvel at the multiplicity of the human experience.

And, he’s already surveying new territory to expand the realm. “My ears are open for more,” Elling says. “We may as well think of this as Passion World, Volume 1, since I know I haven’t even touched on music from the Middle East, Asia or Africa. For now, though, the arrangements on Passion World are the ones I want to give to different audiences as I tour. It’s remarkable how people respond when you make an obvious effort to learn and honor a precious part of their culture.” In one sense, Kurt Elling is following the artist’s imperative to search out the most resonant material, whatever the source. That necessity to keep stoking the creative fires is an interior process. But there’s another, similarly primal but outwardly directed impulse at work. Elling is putting into practice E.M. Forster’s famous dictum from Howards End, “Only connect!...Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.” Connect he does, offering another way to understand jazz as a truly international music. —Andrew GilbertPA

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FOR ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF ALL THE FOREIGN-LANGUAGE LYRICS FROM PASSION WORLD, GO TO WWW.KURTELLING.COM/MUSIC/PASSION_WORLD

1 / THE VERSE / 1:38 Music by John Clayton, Lyrics by Kurt Elling Ginger Kids Music (ASCAP) / New Prescription Music (BMI) administered worldwide by Painted Desert Music

2 / AFTER THE DOOR / 3:55 Music by Pat Metheny, Lyrics by Kurt Elling Pat Meth Music Corp. (BMI) Featuring Gary Versace, piano Arranged by Laurence Hobgood

3 / LOCH TAY BOAT SONG / 7:02 Traditional, Composed by Annie C. MacLeod, Lyrics by Sir Harold Boulton Performed with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra Featuring Tommy Smith, tenor saxophone Arranged by Florian Ross Music commissioned by the SNJO with support from Creative Scotland

4 / SI TE CONTARA / 5:35 Music and Lyrics by Félix Reina Altuna Sociedad General de Autores de Espana (SGAE) / Spirit Two Music obo Hadem Music Corp. / Hall of Fame Music Co. Inc. (BMI) Featuring Gary Versace, accordion and James Shipp, conga Arranged by Kurt Elling, Francisco Torres and Laurence Hobgood

5 / LA VIE EN ROSE / 8:12 Music and Lyrics by Édith Giovanna Gassion and Louis Guglielmi, Additional Lyrics by Kurt Elling Editions Beuscher Arpege (SACEM) Performed with the WDR Big Band & WDR Funkhausorchester Featuring Karolina Strassmayer, alto saxophone Arranged and Conducted by Michael Abene

6 / BONITA CUBA / 6:37 Music by Arturo Sandoval, Lyrics by Kurt Elling and Phil Galdston Sandoval Enterprise of America (ASCAP) / New Prescription Music (BMI) administered worldwide by Painted Desert Music / Kazoom Music (ASCAP) Featuring Arturo Sandoval, trumpet Arranged by Arturo Sandoval, Kurt Elling, Bryan Carter and John Belzaguy

7 / WHERE THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME / 4:51 Music and Lyrics by Paul Hewson, Dave Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Universal-Polygram International Publishing obo U2 (PRS) Arranged by John McLean Background Vocals Arranged by Josh Nelson and Kurt Elling

8 / THE TANGLED ROAD / 7:18 Music by Richard Galliano, Lyrics by Kurt Elling BMG Platinum Songs obo Francis Dreyfus Music (SACEM) / New Prescription Music (BMI) administered worldwide by Painted Desert Music Featuring Till Brönner, trumpet Arranged by Laurence Hobgood

9 / VOCÊ JÁ FOI À BAHIA? / 2:18 Music and Lyrics by Dorival Caymmi EMI Robbins Catalog (ASCAP) / Mangione Filhos-CIA LTDA (SGAE) Featuring Sara Gazarek, voice Arranged by John McLean and Kurt Elling

10 / NICHT WANDLE, MEIN LICHT (LIEBESLIEDER WALZER OP. 52, NO. 17) / 7:00 Music by Johannes Brahms Performed with the WDR Funkhausorchester & the WDR Big Band Featuring Frank Chastenier, piano Arranged for Orchestra and Conducted by Michael Abene Based on a reharmonization by Laurence Hobgood

11 / WHO IS IT (CARRY MY JOY ON THE LEFT, CARRY MY PAIN ON THE RIGHT) / 4:49 Music and by Lyrics Björk Guðmundsdóttir Universal-Polygram International Publishing, Inc. (PRS) Background Vocals Arranged by Kurt Elling and Josh Nelson Featuring Gary Versace, piano Arranged by John McLean

12 / WHERE LOVE IS / 5:13 Music by Brian Byrne, Lyrics by James Joyce Downtown DLJ Songs LLC obo Asamesa Publishing (ASCAP) Arranged by John McLean

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Produced by Kurt Elling Co-Produced by Chris Dunn and Bryan Farina Recorded by Chris Allen and Ted Tuthill at Sear Sound, New York, NY December 2-3, 2014 Assistant Engineer: Lim Wei Additional Recording and Mixed by Seth Presant at The Village Studios, Los Angeles, CA “Loch Tay Boat Song” Recorded by Mark McKellen at The Royal Conservatoire, Glasgow, Scotland February 23, 2014. Music commissioned by the SNJO with support from Creative Scotland “Bonita Cuba” Produced by Arturo Sandoval, Recorded by Dustin Higgins in Los Angeles, CA January 12, 2015 “La Vie En Rose and “Nicht Wandle, Mein Licht (Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 52, No. 17)” Produced by Lucas Schmid, Coordination by Annette Hauber, Recording Producer Christian Schmitt, Engineered by Reinhold Nickel, assisted by Thomas Kupilas at WDR Studios, Köln, Germany, November 29 - December 4, 2012 Mastered by Paul Blakemore at CMG Mastering A&R Administration: Mary Hogan Photography: Anna WebberCover Photo: Kurt Elling Package Design: Andrew Pham Kurt Elling − voiceJohn McLean − acoustic and electric guitarsGary Versace − piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond B-3, accordionClark Sommers − bassKendrick Scott − drums, voice (4) Special Guests:Till Brönner − trumpet (8)Frank Chastenier − piano (10) Richard Galliano – accordion (“Parisian Heartbreak”) [Digital Only]

Sara Gazarek − voice (7, 9, 11)Alan Pasqua − celeste (“Parisian Heartbreak”) [Digital Only]Arturo Sandoval − trumpet (6) James Shipp − percussion, voice (4)Tommy Smith − saxophone (3)Karolina Strassmayer − saxophone (5)Francisco Torres – percussion and voice (4) “Loch Tay Boat Song”Scottish National Jazz OrchestraTommy Smith – conductor, tenor, soloistSteve Hamilton – pianoCalum Gourlay – bassAlyn Cosker – drumsRuaridh Pattison – clarinetMartin Kershaw – clarinetBill Fleming – bass clarinet “Bonita Cuba”Arturo Sandoval – trumpetDave Siegel – keyboardsJohn Belzaguy – bassJohnny Friday – drums “La Vie En Rose” and “Nicht Wandle, Mein Licht (Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 52, No. 17)”WDR Funkhausorchester & WDR Big BandLucas Schmid – artistic director Language Advisors:Christian Schmitt – GermanFrancisco Torres – SpanishCatina DeLuna – PortugueseEnzo Capua and Carol Loverde – ItalianAnna Maria Jopek – Polish Till Brönner appears courtesy of Universal Music Germany Kendrick Scott endorses Yamaha Corporation, Remo, Vater, Puresound, Zildjian Protechtor, Craviotto snare drums and Danmar percussion

Artist Management:

Bryan Farina for Kurt Elling

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