Long article in The Vancouver Sun, dec 20, 2008

[narrow daylight]

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news ... c0e2b0&p=1

Home at last

'I feel like it's sort of come around now, and I've got my own family and it's like it was. I'm feeling a sense of place now that is home, and that is in West Vancouver,' Diana Krall says.

Diana Krall whirls into the concierge suite at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, hair, dress, and scarf billowing. "I am so sorry I'm late -- I was sprinkling sugar on the cookies.

She has also been dusting this morning, in her closet, keeping up with her twin boys, and trying to keep her eyes "pried open" as she fights jet lag.
"I've been working, just going solid, I just came from Brazil," she says. "But I get up with the kids every morning, 6:30 no matter what. I'm a mom first."

"We went on the Christmas Train in Stanley Park the other night. We were like Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, singing Here Comes Santa Claus, Elvis and I singing full blast.

"I enjoyed every minute of it and so did Elvis and the twins -- they love trains. It was one of the best days we have had since our wedding."

Krall falls into a chair, lets herself melt for a moment, long arms and legs akimbo. Then the thought of rattling around Stanley Park on the Christmas Train with her kids re-animates her and she bursts into a smile. "This is the best time in our lives," she says.

Her sister Michelle Krall-Wigmore, who just spent an evening "in Santa's workshop" wrestling with packaging and playing with the toys that will be under the tree for the boys, nods her head in agreement.

Michelle holds up half the sky for her sister -- "she got the speaking gene," laughs Krall. "I'm so self-critical and I feel that I don't really communicate well [when] not behind a piano and my thought processes are all over the place a little bit... ."

"She got the piano gene," quips Michelle.

"We're yin and yang," says Krall. "We're a team. She is working so, so hard on the benefit."

Krall is talking about the family's Feb. 16 fundraiser at the Hotel Vancouver to help blood cancer patients, An Evening with Diana Krall, Elton John, Elvis Costello and James Taylor.

Michelle is manning the cellphone, fielding calls from sponsors, volunteers and friends, the army massing to prepare for the event -- an evening that is not just a party, but a promise they made to their mother.

Their mother, Adella Krall, fought multiple myeloma, an incurable form of cancer that affects the immune system, for six years, through gruelling treatments and blessed respites, before succumbing in May 2002.

"We went on the Christmas Train on my Mom's birthday," says Diana, wiping away sudden tears. "She just delighted in everything like that and I could feel her with me because I feel the same way."

Grief over their loss still moves both sisters to tears, just as thoughts of their mother easily move them to gratitude. "We're thankful we had a mother we could feel that way about," says Michelle.

Adella, a teacher and school librarian, spoke at the first benefit at Diva at the Met in 1998.

"She was wearing this beautiful, one-shouldered velvet dress. She looked gorgeous. It was after her bone-marrow transplant," Krall says. "She was well, and she wanted to show everybody what well looks like."

Their mother was charismatic, Krall says, and that night she brought down the house. "She used quotes from Groucho Marx like, I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."

That first benefit raised $50,000 -- and the numbers have grown every year. "For this particular event we are raising funds for the hematology clinical trials unit at Vancouver General Hospital," says Michelle.

Funds directed to the clinical trials unit will potentially change outcomes for blood-cancer patients everywhere says Dr. Michael Barnett, head of hematology at UBC. The unit supports research, and evaluates new, less-toxic drugs, and allows patients life-saving treatments earlier than would otherwise be possible.

Funds also help patients cope with the expenses of coming to Vancouver for treatment, and the family recently dedicated the Krall centre at VGH, an outpatient treatment centre that is homey and welcoming.

The Kralls know too well the challenges that strike a family when a critical illness arrives out of the blue.

"I was just starting to be able to pay my rent when my mom got sick," says Krall. Her mom, like all B.C. blood cancer patients, had to be transferred to Vancouver for treatment; months of follow-up care in the city were required.

"It was so difficult, really, because there is this emotion and stress. The stress of getting an apartment in Vancouver was just huge. We were not privileged at that time."

The memory of that struggle has prompted Krall to look at options for developing patient housing, and a needs assessment study is being done toward that long-term goal.

Getting this kind of intense treatment, says Krall, "is this long journey, you get so deeply in it you have to know that there will be food and shelter while you go through it."

Krall made the commitment to her mother before she had the success she enjoys now. "I was sitting on my mom's bed wearing the same grey sweater I wore every day to the hospital. She said if she had to see that grey sweater one more time... . I had $11 in the bank at the time, I was still schlepping to Boston to do piano gigs in a hotel. I said, 'Mom, when you get well and if I get any kind of success, let's do something.'"

As her mother recovered from the bone-marrow transplant, Krall's career lifted off. "I was able to take her to the White House, to Hawaii, to meet Bill Clinton," she says.

After Adella passed away in May 2002, moving from grief to action with the benefits was no snap for Krall. "It was Elton [John] after my mom passed away who helped me, who understands my family, who understands me and who understands how to do these things. He really got things back together for me after my mom passed away."

She searches for words to express what the close friendship that is both musical and personal with Elton John means to her: "I can't say enough about him. He is the reason, the answer to that question of, 'How do you play and sing again after going through something like that?' "

"Elton," Krall says, "brought joy, hilarity and fun," back to the table. "What a good time we had. My Mom was all about having a good time, always saying, 'Lets have a really good time whatever we do.' "

The spirit and "tangible help and effort" he brings to the benefits has helped the buzz grow -- and helped make it one of Krall's favourite nights of the year, a night, she says, when "anything can happen."

While Michelle works with prime movers like the Vancouver Hospital Foundation, title sponsor Frank Giustra and the Radcliffe Foundation and Macklam/Feldman management to keep the machinery oiled, Krall has to wrangle the talent.

I find it really, really hard to personally ask people," says Krall, "but this is how it all works and then we do their benefit."

There has been pressure to make the benefit larger, but for Diana it's important to keep it intimate. "I don't want this to just be something that's about my image. This has been so personal for our family, it has to stay personal."

As she preps for the benefit, Krall is taking time out to reflect on a whirlwind year.

"I've got an album coming out when?" she asks her sister.

"End of March," says Michelle without missing a beat.

"I recorded in August, then I went to southeast Asia, then I came home and had a five-day meltdown, then packed again and went to Brazil," Krall says.

She has also been in L.A. producing a new album for Barbra Streisand.

The collaboration with Streisand started when Krall was pregnant. "She'd come to some of my gigs and mentioned that she needed inspiration for her tour, so I started sending her CDs."

Streisand surprised Krall at her Madison Square Garden concert in 2006 when she dedicated the song Down With Love to her. The shout-out turned the heads of audience members Oprah Winfrey and Rosie O'Donnell.

Krall shakes her head, incredulous. "I mean I'm just this girl from Nanaimo, and I'm pregnant, out to here with the twins. And then I got the phone call asking me to work with her."

She was so stunned, she says she didn't call back. At least not right away. She had to absorb it. But soon she was down at Streisand's house, playing songs on her piano. Now she's booking orchestra times, tracking budgets.

"Cool, eh?" says Krall, who is suddenly just the girl from Nanaimo again, as surprised as anyone at the thought.

"We speak to each other as women, as moms. She's someone I really admire. We talk about art and architecture and design and clothes. The normal things."

Keeping family near is part of how Krall keeps things normal for herself.

"I had the children with me, and Michelle and her husband Rob. Elvis was working on an opera in Paris with Sting. It's all happening at once. Elvis said, one day we're going to look back on all this and shake our heads."

Close family ties have helped Krall learn how to live in a world that was forever changed by her mother's final diagnosis.

"It was very difficult after my Mom passed away. Your family gets blown apart, everything you've been used to your whole life, the carpet gets pulled out and everything gets all jumbled up."

Krall remembers the frustration of struggling to "put together Christmas like my mom did. It was so impossible."

"I feel like it's sort of come around now, and I've got my own family and it's like it was. I'm feeling a sense of place now that is home, and that is in West Vancouver."

She and Costello recently hosted a carol sing, and attended one at a local church. "We do our things, we have our places that we do our shopping and it's the best feeling to feel like I'm home and all the things that I learned from my mom and her influence."

The new album, Quiet Nights, she says is "sensual and erotic." Quiet Nights expresses the happiness she feels with her own family, she says, and a life that is finding new ground.

"I didn't figure it out until after I finished the album and listened to it. Quiet Nights is about Brazil. It's a love letter and it's like you are whispering to your lover that you are content.

"This album is a bit deeper, and it snuck up on me. Every record is the same way. I never plan it, I just go along and then I leave it alone, and go back and look at it and it's the mirror that is showing you something, and you say, 'Oh, this is it.' "

The loss of her mother is still with her. "It doesn't get better, it just gets different. But I love my life now more than I ever have. I'm in love with my husband, my children and where I live. Right now this is exactly where I want to be."

dryan@vancouversun.com

- - -

DID YOU KNOW

- Approximately 1,000 people per year in B.C. are diagnosed with leukemia and other blood cancers.

- Funding from the Kralls for the VGH Hematology Clinical Trials Unit has enabled a quadrupling of new drug trials.

- One of the new myeloma drugs developed has provided 133 patients with life-extending treatment in the last two years.

- The Krall family's six charity benefits have raised nearly $4 million.

- For more information on Evening with Diana Krall and friends or how you can help blood cancer patients in B.C. contact:

[scielle]

I wish Elvis and Diana turned up at my local chuch to sing carols - they could use some help...

[Bud]

Thanks for the article, narrow daylight! Lots of highlights, especially the info on her connection with Streisand.

Has the family shifted their home base from NYC to West Vancouver??

[Samuel]

Thanks narrowdaylight!

[gundy516]

Bud, I'm wondering the same thing. I always wondered where they might settle with the boys and I know the Vancouver area is a great area for the arts and entertainment industry as well as education.