Photos: See Highlights from KURT ELLING CELEBRATES WEATHER REPORT at Birdland

Two-time GRAMMY Award winner Kurt Elling celebrates the jazz fusion band Weather Report with a new show at Birdland. The show opened last night, Thursday March 27, 2025, and continues tonight (Friday March 28) and tomorrow (Saturday March 29) with sets at 8:30 and 10:30 pm at Birdland Jazz Club. Elling is renowned for his signature, rich sound and an inventive and individualized body of work. With a one-of-a kind brand of contemporary beat lyricism and vocalese-writing ingenuity, the Chicago-based musician has extended the parameters of vocal jazz and enlarged its vocabulary. He radiates thoughtfulness, fearlessness, and joy. Elling is accompanied at Birdland by Julius Rodriguez on piano and keyboard, Mike Moreno on guitar, Essiet Essiet on bass, and Marcus Finnie on drums.

Over a twenty-five year career of touring and recording, Elling has won three Prix du Jazz Vocal (France), two German Echo Awards, two Dutch Edison Awards, and has been nominated for a GRAMMY Award sixteen times. He has had a 14-year run atop the DownBeat Critics and Readers polls, and has won twelve Jazz Journalists Awards for “Male Vocalist of the Year”.

Elling’s work with other leading figures in the jazz world has included important collaborations with Branford Marsalis, Danilo Perez, Fred Hersch, Charlie Hunter and Stefon Harris. He has also performed as a featured soloist with many of the world’s leading large ensembles, including the NY Philharmonic, The BBC Concert Symphony, The Count Basie Orchestra, The WDR Big Band and Orchestra, The Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra, and The Village Vanguard Orchestra.

In addition to his work as a lyricist and composer for his own ensembles, Kurt Elling has co-created multi-disciplinary performances for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater and The City of Chicago. Jazz At Lincoln Center saw the world premier of The Big Blind, an entirely new jazz musical Elling is co-writing with collaborator Phil Galdston (“Save The Best For Last”). National Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky declared that, “In Kurt Elling’s art, the voice of jazz gives new spiritual presence to the ancient, sweet and powerful bond between poetry and music.”

Below, see photos from opening night of the new show snapped by photographer Conor Weiss.

Learn more about the singer online at kurtelling.com

Tickets to see Kurt Elling on March 28 and 29 at Birdland are available online here.