Originally from Chicago, multi-award-winning vocalist Kurt Elling is regarded as one of the great voices in contemporary jazz. His career of more than three decades at the highest level has included collaborations with many of the most highly regarded musicians and ensembles in contemporary music, including Branford Marsalis, Fred Hersch, Danilo Pérez, Brad Mehldau, the New York Philharmonic, and the WDR Big Band. Elling’s interest in singing was influenced by his father, who served as a Kapellmeister at a Lutheran church, leading him to begin singing first in school religious choirs and, later, while studying religious philosophy at university, in Chicago jazz clubs.

It was at one of these clubs, the Green Mill Jazz Club, that he met Laurence Hobgood, the pianist with whom he would establish a long-standing artistic partnership. Hobgood was his principal creative partner on Close Your Eyes (1995), the album that marked Elling’s recording debut and was followed by more than a dozen studio releases, including Dedicated to You (2009) and Secrets Are the Best Stories (2021), both of which received the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Alongside his work as a bandleader, the vocalist co-leads the project SuperBlue with guitarist Charlie Hunter and is regularly involved in the conception and direction of musicals and multidisciplinary stage productions, notably in collaboration with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He also occasionally participates in projects led by other composers, as in his collaboration with saxophonist Bob Mintzer.

The orchestral format is one of the dimensions of Kurt Elling’s creative work, and it is in this category that this concert falls, with the vocalist accompanied by the newly established National Jazz Orchestra of North Macedonia, an ensemble bringing together some of the country’s most prestigious jazz musicians. This Balkan ensemble will be conducted by Dzijan Emin, an accomplished instrumentalist with an impressive track record as a member of several European orchestras, who over the past two decades has developed a multifaceted body of work as a composer, conductor, arranger, and producer across a range of musical territories, imbuing them with his personal identity through a hybrid approach to musical expression.

Throughout his career, Emin has had the opportunity to collaborate with prominent figures in contemporary music, including Gloria Estefan, Jeff Mills, and French electronic pop duo Air, among many others, and to conduct some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Parisian Orchestre Lamoureux. This extensive record of activity establishes him as the leading musical figure on the North Macedonian music scene.