Prague Spring Jazz: Kurt Elling & Fred Hersch
Charismatic American vocalist and two-time Grammy Award winner accompanied by the celebrated jazz pianist Fred Hersch, curator of the Prague Spring Jazz Series 2027.
Performers
- Kurt Elling – voice
- Fred Hersch – piano
“Jazz has always been a forum for truth-telling,” says singer, songwriter and dramatist Kurt Elling. This two-time Grammy Award winner and recipient of many other international awards, including the ECHO Jazz Prize and awards from the Académie du Jazz de Paris, has extended the parameters of vocal jazz. He has led DownBeat magazine’s Critics and Readers Polls for the last two decades and has won fifteen Jazz Journalists Association Awards for “Male Vocalist of the Year.” The New York Times hailed him as “the standout male jazz vocalist of our time” and the British daily The Guardian described him as “a kind of Sinatra with superpowers”. “His vocal technique – featuring unique phrasing, use of space, and scatting – is as captivating as his choice in lyrics,” stated respected jazz critic Jim Hynes for the online magazine PostGenre in a review of Elling’s performance on the album Kurt Elling & Yellowjackets Play Weather Report, recorded live and released in August 2026.
Kurt Elling collaborates with a series of elite jazz musicians – Branford Marsalis, Danilo Pérez, Charlie Hunter, the Yellowjackets, and also with groove masters of the millennial generation such as drummer Corey Fonville or keyboardist DJ Harrison. He regularly appears with leading world orchestras and big bands, including the New York Philharmonic, the BBC Concert Orchestra, WDR Big Band, Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, and the Count Basie, Metropole and Village Vanguard Orchestras. During his thirty-year career he has given concerts in more than seventy countries and has performed several times at the White House, among others, at President Barack Obama’s first State Dinner.
This is not the first time Elling has appeared in concert with pianist Fred Hersch. They teamed up at the celebrated Ravinia Jazz Festival in Illinois and, primarily, they recorded the CD Leaves of Grass together, which some critics regard as Elling’s best album. The Prague Spring concert will bring together two artists, whom we can confidently describe as some of the best and most respected jazzmen on the planet.
