Jazz Vocalist Kurt Elling to Release New Project “Wildflowers, Vol. 3” ft. Pianist Christian Sands on August 22nd, 2025 | LISTEN!
Renowned, multiple GRAMMY award-winning vocalist Kurt Elling returns with Wildflowers, Vol. 3—the latest in his series of impromptu albums, created in the spur of the moment with acclaimed pianist Christian Sands
Revered as one of the most influential and innovative vocalists in the global jazz scene, Kurt Elling takes pride in never traveling the predictable path. With his Wildflowers series of spontaneous releases, Elling brings that unpredictability to the forefront. Each volume finds the boundary-stretching singer working without a net, collaborating with some of the most inventive voices in modern jazz in a pressure-cooker environment.
For Wildflowers, Vol. 3, set for release on August 22, 2025 via Elling’s own Big Shoulders imprint, Elling partners for the first time with Christian Sands. The GRAMMY-nominated pianist emerged as a member of two bands led by bassist Christian McBride – Inside Straight and the Christian McBride Trio – and has since released an acclaimed series of questing and meditative albums under his own name. The two make for a spirited and wide-ranging pair, delving into surprising sources for the EP’s eclectic repertoire.
“Christian and I have been friends for some time now,” says Elling. “I’ve been looking for an opportunity to work with him, and Wildflowers serves that purpose very specifically and very well. We’re both very busy with long term projects, but Wildflowers allows me to call somebody out of the blue and say, ‘Hey, let’s spend the day together. Let me buy you lunch and dinner, we’ll get a bottle of wine, we’ll play some songs, and we’ll find out where it leads.’”
Where it led in this case is to five wildly diverse compositions that range from the joyous – vibrantly capturing the session’s impulsive atmosphere on a tune like “Glow Worm” – to the profoundly moving, as with the stirring ballad “My Son.”
The set is a dizzying mash-up of eras and styles. “Glow Worm” is a song from a 1920s German operetta made popular by the vocal group The Mills Brothers in the early ‘50s; Elling pays homage to the quartet by bending his own “live recording” rules to overdub multiple voices for the track. “My Son” originates in Guillermo del Toro’s 2022 stop-motion animated film of Pinocchio. “Song of the Rainbow People” is a Christian Sands original featuring newly-penned lyrics by Elling, while “Emotion” unearths the heartbreaking ballad at the core of a Bee Gees pop hit. Elling and Sands clearly have a blast jamming on the Thelonious Monk classic “Blue Monk,” both digging deep into the blues foundations of their respective voices.
Such eccentric choices have become a trademark of Elling’s work, particularly in his recent Wildflowers and Guilty Pleasures series, both of which find inspiration in unlikely places. “Good music is good music,” the singer shrugs. “Production values change over time, but compositions have a flexibility to them. If they’re good compositions, they contain other possibilities if you have the heart to try to discover them.”
While his recent work has found him searching ever further afield for such discoveries, Elling’s career has long been marked by unexpected choices. “That just seems to me like part of the jazz singer’s job,” he insists. It’s part of jazz history to take a little bit of a risk, to roll the dice with a song and find out what jazz people would do with it. The warp and woof of the fabric is in the jazz musicians who made standards out of what started as Broadway or Tin Pan Alley hits. I’m just following up on that.”
Wildflowers, Vol. 3, like its two predecessors, exults in the camaraderie of the recording studio and the intimate chemistry of the duo, foregoing arduous planning in favor of instinctive collaboration. With this release we’re blessed with the opportunity to eavesdrop on an unpremeditated dialogue between two brilliantly gifted musical raconteurs, highlighted by Kurt Elling’s boundless vocal abilities and Christian Sands’ captivating keyboard eloquence.
Photo Credit: Elliot Mandel
Album Track List:
1. The Glow-Worm – 2:55
Music by Paul Lincke
Lyrics by Lilla Cayley Robinson and Johnny Mercer
Published by Round Hill Music (ASCAP)
2. Song of the Rainbow People – 6:44
Music by Christian Sands
Lyric by Kurt Elling
Published by Christian Sands Music (ASCAP)
3. My Son – 4:06
Music by Alexandre Desplat
Lyric by Guillermo del Toro
Published by Maisie Anthems (ASCAP)
4. Blue Monk – 7:30
Music by Thelonious Monk
Published by Thelonious Music Corp (BMI)
5. Emotion – 6:50
Music and Lyrics by Barry Gibb and Robin Gibb
Published by Gibb Brothers Music and Crompton Songs (BMI)
Credits
Kurt Elling – voice
Christian Sands – piano
Special Guest: Marquis Hill – trumpet (Track 2)
Production
Produced by Kurt Elling
Co-Produced by Christian Sands, Bryan Farina, and Chris Allen
www.bigshouldersrecords.com
ABOUT BIG SHOULDERS RECORDS
Founded by Kurt Elling and longtime manager Bryan Farina, Big Shoulders Records is an artist-driven label committed to giving musicians creative control and supporting work that stretches boundaries. Launched in early 2025, the label is already home to several notable jazz-forward releases.
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