American jazz-vocalist superstar Kurt Elling is not in doubt: After a more than 30-year musical journey, Klüver’s Big Band from Denmark has played its way up to a position among the elite of European big bands. In recent years Klüver’s Big Band has become Kurt Elling’s first choice when he performs with a full-size orchestra. This is a stamp of quality of the highest order, considering that in 2009 Kurt Elling won a Grammy for Best Vocal Jazz Album, and for twelve years in a row has been chosen as the world’s best male jazz vocalist by the accredited American jazz magazine, DownBeat.
Six Nights in a Row at Birdland
Klüver’s Big Band and Kurt Elling began 2011 with a tour of Scandinavia that earned high critical praise. In July the collaboration continued at North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland, one of the world’s largest jazz festivals, and from October 21 until November 2, 2011, Klüver’s Big Band and Kurt Elling will be touring the United States. Ten concerts are booked, including a whole six nights in a row at Birdland, New York’s legendary jazz club on Times Square, as well as concerts in Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C. His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of Denmark, is the patron of the tour.
Unusual Working Conditions
Klüver’s Big Band has come a long way since 1977, when it was launched by a group of young, Danish music students under the leadership of Jens Klüver. 11 years later one of the reasons for the orchestra’s sustained success came in the form of being chosen as Denmark’s first “rhythmic basic ensemble” and since then the band has received economic assistance from the Danish state and its hometown, Aarhus. All this support has secured the band some fantastic working conditions – relatively unheard of in the rhythmic music milieu – and has provided possibilities for continued development.
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Spreading Jazz to a Broad Audience
Klüver’s Big Band plays over 60 concerts per year. Since one of the important aims of the orchestra is to disseminate knowledge of big band jazz, a portion of these concerts takes place at grade schools and high schools. Klüver’s Big Band plays music from the entire spectrum of jazz, although most emphasis is placed on new, big band music that maintains tradition while adding elements of modern jazz. A large portion of the repertoire is composed and/or arranged especially for the band, and over the years many prominent soloists, composers and arrangers have imprinted their warm jazz expression deep in the hearts of both audiences and Klüver’s band members.
International Stars and Collective Energy
In recent years Klüver’s Big Band has performed with guitar icon John Scofield and drummer Bill Stewart, with Chick Corea’s favorite drummer, Jeff Ballard, with saxophonists Donny McCaslin and Dick Oatts, with trumpet player Terell Stafford, Rolling Stones musicians Tim Ries and Bernard Fowler, Spyro Gyra vibraphonist Dave Samuels, and the former drummer and current leader of the Count Basie Orchestra, Dennis Mackrel.
Klüver’s Big Band is manned by some of Denmark’s best jazz musicians, several of whom are soloists of international format, but it is first and foremost a team whose collective energy and ability to take off and swing like mad is truly overpowering.
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