KURT Elling, widely regarded as one of jazz's greatest singers, is discussing the niceties of vocalese, that ticklish business of writing lyrics for what was originally an instrumental composition or even a notable improvised solo break.
"I used to think about it more consciously – 'OK, this is a saxophone solo,' or what have you – but now I understand that the saxophone is closest to the human voice in the way I hear it, and the tenor sax is closest to my range, and there are certai
n tenor players whose work just speaks to me in a way that is more clear, for some reason."
Elling's poised, mellifluous baritone and athletic scat singing have seen him top numerous polls for best jazz singer and attracted a clutch of Grammy nominations. Sometimes described as "an instrumental singer", he has set and sung lyrics to such gems as bassist Charlie Hayden's solo based on Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade and Wayne Shorter's sax line in the Joe Zawinul classic A Remark You Made.
He's particularly drawn to Shorter's music; in fact he's premiering a new vocalese for a Shorter work on his current tour – an all-Swedish gig list, bar what promises to be a special night in Edinburgh's Queen's Hall on Thursday, 15 January, when the Chicago singer makes his Scottish debut, along with his regular musical partner, pianist Laurence Hobgood, in the company of the Norrbotten Big Band, led by US trumpeter and bandleader Tim Hagans.
"I think I got lucky because of the deadline," he says of the new lyric, based on Shorter's Speak No Evil, one of his more famous compositions from the 1960s – "and Tim has written a real to-be-heard arrangement for it".
Elling, 41, doesn't balk at setting his poetically and spiritually infused lyrics to the greats. His current album, Nightmoves (Concord) matches his words, adapted from those of the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi, to a lesser-known Ellington number, I Like the Sunrise, while 2003's Man in the Air saw him vocalising one of the most iconic pieces of music in jazz, Resolution, from John Coltrane's A Love Supreme.
This may be Elling's first performance in Scotland, but he knows the country, having spent a year studying in Edinburgh during his college days. He's made numerous holiday returns, but this time he hits the city with vengeance, along with his Swedish-based big band, a line-up which makes different demands on the singer from his usual touring quartet.
"You obviously have a lot more volume around the stage, and that's fun," he says, "but you're the focus of how things go, so it's a lot more intense."
We can still expect some spectacular scatting though. "With improvising, whether you're a singer or an instrumentalist, ultimately what you're trying to do is get past whatever instrument it is you're using so you're just playing music."
Getting back to vocalese (among the pioneers of which, in the 1950s and 60s were the trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, including the inimitable Annie Ross – Jimmy Logan's sister) he again stresses the unselfconscious approach: "I'm not thinking about trying to sound like anything other than trying to serve the clarity of the line and of the text."
He laughs. "It can be quite challenging for some people to hear a vocalese lyric for the first time, so I'm quite sympathetic to the listener."
Challenged or otherwise, Queen's Hall listeners can also expect to be mightily impressed.
• Visit
www.kurtelling.com