Ellington

Jarreau’s long association with NDR prompted Jörg Achim Keller, chief conductor of the NDR Bigband, to suggest a collaboration with the singer in 2016, “Doing a production with Al and Ellington’s music was something I had wanted to do since the early 2000´s,” he remembers. “Al’s reaction was very positive from the start.” Jörg prepared a list of some hundred Ellington titles and, as Jarreau later recalled, “We just went down the list, and it was a case of, ‘Oh, that one works for me,’ and ‘Let’s do this one as an old gut-bucket blues – what was important for me was to find myself inside the music and maybe make a different kind of statement about Ellington so people could hear the music in a different way from anything they had heard before.”
In writing the charts, Jörg was careful to respect Jarreau’s approach to the material by giving him space. Tracks such as ‘I’m Beginning to See the Light’ or ‘I Got It Bad (and that Ain’t Good)’ also give the band’s soloists headroom to give of their very best. “These are highly evolved, intelligent soloists who can play with anybody in the world,” said Jarreau. “They’re pushing me, and I love the push, and they’re making me sound like a real singer!”
Jarreau and the band toured the music during the latter part of 2016, “There was still some fine-tuning going on during the tour, from concert to concert,” Jörg added with a smile. “He loved doing those ballads – and each one had a different feel. ‘Come Sunday’ was very important to him, though. That chart was reworked twice before he was finally happy with it! On some songs, he went for a pure ballad style – ‘I Got It Bad (and that Ain’t Good),’ some tunes were put into a pop/R&B-bag (‘Lush Life,’ ‘Come Sunday’) and he loved that ‘old gutbucket blues’ feel of ‘I Ain’t Got Nothing but the Blues.’”