For Diana Krall, timing is everything
Posted: 06 Jul 2007, 03:07http://www.democratandchronicle.com/app ... 1077/ENT05
Jeff Spevak
Staff music critic
(July 5, 2007)
Ouch! Elvis Costello just got stung by a bee. Otherwise, life couldn't be better for Diana Krall, taking a tour break last week at her home in Vancouver, B.C. The rock-star husband is going out to do the grocery shopping ("Is that Elvis Costello buying some hydrocortisone?"), the twins are cooperating, the phone interviews are getting done, one by one. Although, when the guy from Rochester asks what was the biggest mistake she ever made in her life, she replies, "I'll just keep that to myself."
No, the tune that perhaps one of the biggest names in today's contemporary jazz (with enough crossover power to have played Lilith Fair) is now singing is on her latest album, 2006's From This Moment On: the Ira and George Gershwin standard, "I Was Doing Alright." Followed by the line, she points out, "but I'm doing better than ever now."
But at home, the music is "Whatever Elvis is listening to," her iPod (R&B crooner Donny Hathaway and rockers the Fratellis) or a classic selection by the twins such as "Nellie the Elephant." Krall tunefully recites a key line: "Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk, and said goodbye to the circus."
Krall — who plays Monday with trumpeter Chris Botti at the Constellation Brands-Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center — listened to pop music while growing up in Nanaimo, B.C. She's most famous for being the kid who plowed through her father's collection of old jazz records and sheet music. "I knew when I heard 'Night Train,' that's what I was going to do," she says. "I knew I was going to play with Ray Brown. That's not something you can go to college for. I remember being in the fourth grade, and playing 'The Baby Elephant Walk' in the talent show because it was groovy."
But no artists' influences are straight down the fairway. "Jack Benny" she says. "Eddie Izzard."
Comedians?
"What's not to get? It's all about timing, isn't it? Steve Allen, it has to have an influence on me, especially when you're young. Art affects art. Martha Graham, and how it relates to dancing. I guess I had mentors who were not necessarily musicians."
Otherwise, she's playing it straight these days. The next album will not include any covers of "Watching the Detectives," one of the hits by her husband. They were married in 2003 at Elton John's estate outside of London.
"It doesn't suck, lemme tell ya," Krall says. "Elton John is one of my dearest friends. I played along with all of his records when I was young."
At the risk of speaking in cliché, is Krall ever stunned by the life that's unfolded for her 42 years?
"Every nanosecond," she says, dropping an f-bomb in the middle of that phrase with the precision of a heavy-metal rocker. There are moments here when Krall seems tough, in command of the Krall space, deciding if her music will appear in Sex in the City or a Lexus commercial. Not like the woman lounging seductively in the pictures on her CDs. What does Krall say when they roll a big four-poster bed into the photo shoot and tell her, "Jump on this?"
"I produce and control my photo shoots," she says defiantly. "No one else is in the room; my best girlfriend usually takes the pictures. On The Look of Love, there was such a stink over the photos. People asked me, 'How could you let them do that to you?' I'm like, 'Um, they're the ones that wanted to airbrush the cleavage.'"
A mistake? A big mistake? "They're not mistakes," Krall says. "Everything is a snapshot of where I was at the time.
"I just do what's right for me. I made a decision that I would do something like 'Day In Day Out,' and not belt out over top of the band. I wanted to play it close to the mike, and very subtle."
Jazz standards are where her head is now. "It Could Happen to You." "Come Dance With Me." She will undoubtedly return to the idea of her 2004 album The Girl in the Other Room and songs like Tom Waits' "Temptation," Chris Smithers' "Love Me Like a Man" and "Almost Blue," by that Costello fellow, when she feels like it.
"There's a reason for it," Krall says. "I do feel that every place is where I'm supposed to be, even if that place is a place of frustration. Which I'm not. I'm not frustrated now. I'm just trying to live a very full life.
"I lost my mother four years ago," she points out; Adella died from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells. "It was very traumatic for me. But one thing I learned from that — from her — is you might not be here for a long time, but you sure are here for a good time."
Jeff Spevak
Staff music critic
(July 5, 2007)
Ouch! Elvis Costello just got stung by a bee. Otherwise, life couldn't be better for Diana Krall, taking a tour break last week at her home in Vancouver, B.C. The rock-star husband is going out to do the grocery shopping ("Is that Elvis Costello buying some hydrocortisone?"), the twins are cooperating, the phone interviews are getting done, one by one. Although, when the guy from Rochester asks what was the biggest mistake she ever made in her life, she replies, "I'll just keep that to myself."
No, the tune that perhaps one of the biggest names in today's contemporary jazz (with enough crossover power to have played Lilith Fair) is now singing is on her latest album, 2006's From This Moment On: the Ira and George Gershwin standard, "I Was Doing Alright." Followed by the line, she points out, "but I'm doing better than ever now."
But at home, the music is "Whatever Elvis is listening to," her iPod (R&B crooner Donny Hathaway and rockers the Fratellis) or a classic selection by the twins such as "Nellie the Elephant." Krall tunefully recites a key line: "Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk, and said goodbye to the circus."
Krall — who plays Monday with trumpeter Chris Botti at the Constellation Brands-Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center — listened to pop music while growing up in Nanaimo, B.C. She's most famous for being the kid who plowed through her father's collection of old jazz records and sheet music. "I knew when I heard 'Night Train,' that's what I was going to do," she says. "I knew I was going to play with Ray Brown. That's not something you can go to college for. I remember being in the fourth grade, and playing 'The Baby Elephant Walk' in the talent show because it was groovy."
But no artists' influences are straight down the fairway. "Jack Benny" she says. "Eddie Izzard."
Comedians?
"What's not to get? It's all about timing, isn't it? Steve Allen, it has to have an influence on me, especially when you're young. Art affects art. Martha Graham, and how it relates to dancing. I guess I had mentors who were not necessarily musicians."
Otherwise, she's playing it straight these days. The next album will not include any covers of "Watching the Detectives," one of the hits by her husband. They were married in 2003 at Elton John's estate outside of London.
"It doesn't suck, lemme tell ya," Krall says. "Elton John is one of my dearest friends. I played along with all of his records when I was young."
At the risk of speaking in cliché, is Krall ever stunned by the life that's unfolded for her 42 years?
"Every nanosecond," she says, dropping an f-bomb in the middle of that phrase with the precision of a heavy-metal rocker. There are moments here when Krall seems tough, in command of the Krall space, deciding if her music will appear in Sex in the City or a Lexus commercial. Not like the woman lounging seductively in the pictures on her CDs. What does Krall say when they roll a big four-poster bed into the photo shoot and tell her, "Jump on this?"
"I produce and control my photo shoots," she says defiantly. "No one else is in the room; my best girlfriend usually takes the pictures. On The Look of Love, there was such a stink over the photos. People asked me, 'How could you let them do that to you?' I'm like, 'Um, they're the ones that wanted to airbrush the cleavage.'"
A mistake? A big mistake? "They're not mistakes," Krall says. "Everything is a snapshot of where I was at the time.
"I just do what's right for me. I made a decision that I would do something like 'Day In Day Out,' and not belt out over top of the band. I wanted to play it close to the mike, and very subtle."
Jazz standards are where her head is now. "It Could Happen to You." "Come Dance With Me." She will undoubtedly return to the idea of her 2004 album The Girl in the Other Room and songs like Tom Waits' "Temptation," Chris Smithers' "Love Me Like a Man" and "Almost Blue," by that Costello fellow, when she feels like it.
"There's a reason for it," Krall says. "I do feel that every place is where I'm supposed to be, even if that place is a place of frustration. Which I'm not. I'm not frustrated now. I'm just trying to live a very full life.
"I lost my mother four years ago," she points out; Adella died from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells. "It was very traumatic for me. But one thing I learned from that — from her — is you might not be here for a long time, but you sure are here for a good time."
Char