The iconoclastic, beat-inspired influence of Mark Murphy was particularly evident in Kurt Elling's earlier records, but in Flirting With Twilight, the latest in an extraordinary series of records for Blue Note, Elling takes a more classical approach, favouring shimmering ballad renditions from the American songbook over hip Kerouacism. But it's a measure of his talent that he sounds no bit diminished by the less obviously racy setting. It's clear that his voice is one of the most versatile and virtuosic of instruments, and that his musical imagination is as fertile when it encounters something as prosaic as "Moonlight Serenade" as it was when it tackled something as consciously cool as "Dolores Dream" on Close Your Eyes. Like the greatest jazz instrumentalists (one thinks of Sonny Rollins or, latterly, Chris Potter), Elling is a master of subtle rhythmic and motivic variation, reliving the notes and words on the page at every turn of the melody. Marvel, for example, at the impossibly long-held "know" in the first verse of "You Don't Know What Love Is", and recoil at its blood-chilling resolution; thrill at his bone-deep understanding of the whys, wherefores, twists and turns of the great jazz tradition. No doubt Elling has the measure of his mainstream repertoire, but admirers of his earlier, more explicitly modernist approach will be pleased to find that he remains the outsider: note the way he casually turns a bebop lick in the middle of "Moonlight" and the way the timbre sours to the point of menace when regret or perfidy loom up in a lyric. Elling's clear and precise expression is a delicate thing and demands impeccable accompaniment. He gets it from Clay Jenkins (trumpet), Jeff Clayton and Bob Sheppard (saxophones), Laurence Hobgood (piano), Marc Johnson (bass) and Peter Erskine (drums). Together, the team move Elling's art forward, finding a way to build on already formidable successes. --Mark Gilbert