1619 Broadway : the Brill Building project

"Kurt Elling might have diluted the impact of this memorable session by not wanting to seem irredeemably serious (with the Coasters' Shoppin' for Clothes, and the Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday), but there are versions of Sam Cooke's You Send Me, Carole King's So Far Away and Paul Simon's An American Tune that will go down as some of the finest ballad interpretations this awesomely equipped vocalist has ever recorded".

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"Forward-thinking jazz vocalist Kurt Elling follows up his progressive 2011 covers album The Gate with his equally ambitious 2012 release ... With his supple, velvet-lined voice, it is perhaps not surprising that it is the more introspective moments like Elling's afterglow ballad version of the Al Dublin/Harry Warren standard "I Only Have Eyes for You" and his atmospheric reworking of Carole King's "So Far Away" that really stick with you. Ultimately, though, it is [the album's] diverse stylistic quality, both in the source material and Elling's arrangements, that make The Brill Building Project one of his most interesting albums".

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"Revoicing classic chord changes, injecting new perspectives into ancient material, 1619 Broadway takes a few listens for its strategies to unfold, and some arrangements work better than others, but its imagination is irrefutable".