Kurt Elling Quotes

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

You know, when I did 'American Idol' the three times, I tried to tell these kids you have to tell the story of the lyric.

The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage.

My advice to singers is always the same: 'Don't sing the song, sing the lyric.'

As a singer, you have to bring the soul to the song.

Technique is superficial. The method used in applying technique is what gives music its character.

I was always interested in choreography - in making people think and feel something.

I am an entertainer and would sing a song if I know my voice would do justice to it.

You have to channel the interpretation and performance into 100 people. And with the audience, the critics.

I don't even know if I always entirely get what I'm trying to say right away with lyrics. I like a lot of things that are more subtext. I grew up mishearing lyrics my whole life, but somehow there's so much more, too, that's implied in vocal delivery and the music itself and the gestural quality of it.

An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.

As actors, you do have to be aware of your audience. You can't act in a vacuum, even if that audience isn't exactly present with you.

With great artists like Elvis, sometimes the songs weren't the greatest thing about him. When I tried to perform some of the songs, I noticed some of the tunes weren't all that brilliant, but it was the performance that sold them.

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.

I'm the interpreter. I'm the one who takes your words and brings them to life. I was trained to sing and dance and laugh, and that's what I want to do.

I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio.

The interesting thing about doing a play is to find a way to make it fresh and do it as though you were doing it for the first time.

To be in front of an audience and pretending, and to lie, this is the principle of acting.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

With Whitney she has such a unique sound and powerful instrument that she made those songs her own. She might as well have written them because she brought such a power and passion to them that were very unique. She has a great gift.

There are a lot of things that make up a performance, a lot of technical things. It isn't always just about pulling it up from the darkest recesses of your mind or your heart. It's your experience and your observation.

For me, music is so passionate, I have to give it my all every time I go onstage. Onstage, it was always comfortable for me, because that's where I felt at home.

When the music is physically demanding, I want to make sure that the effort involved is put across to the audience through physical gesture.