Sun Media article/ interview

[scielle]

Krall balances tour, twins
By JANE STEVENSON – Sun Media

Diana Krall’s bossa-nova drenched new album is called Quiet Nights.

Now given the Nanaimo, B.C.,-born jazz singer-pianist is the mother of two-and-a-half-year-old twins, Dexter and Frank, with husband of six years and British musician Elvis Costello, that title seems more than a little ironic.

“People say, ‘How do you have quiet nights? You have twins!’ I say, ‘It happens, believe me, it might be two o’clock in the morning but it happens,’ ” said Krall, 44, with a laugh in Toronto recently leading up to the Wednesday night launch of her cross-Canada tour in Calgary.

In fact, Krall has no qualms about bringing her youngsters on tour again, as she did previously in 2007 when they were just six months old, in support of her 2006 album, From This Moment On.

Not that she knows exactly what to expect when she loads them on her tour bus this time out.

“They sing The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round so they’re really into that song so we’ll see how it goes,” she says with a smile. “I can’t really panic about it because there’s so much unknown that I’m just going to have to figure out if it works. And if it doesn’t work, you change it.”

Coincidentally, on the day that Krall was in Toronto, Costello’s new interview and music program, Spectacle, was making its debut on CTV at 10 p.m. that night and she planned to watch it.

Costello and the kids were back home in Vancouver.

Krall gives Costello an A-plus as an interviewer, although when it came to her turn on Spectacle, their friend Elton John (whose house in England they got married at), interviewed and performed with her. She also spontaneously performed with Tony Bennett when he was a guest on the show.

“He’s just amazing,” she says of Costello on Spectacle. “He’s a writer, so as an interviewer he knows so much about music and he’s so well spoken and he knows what questions to ask, he performs with the artist, so it’s really unique. He can talk to anybody and he’s so brilliant. I don’t know. My husband’s a bit of a genius, he is, I think.”

Krall, decked out on this day in a beautiful Louis Vutton, ’40s inspired black dress and Givenchy patterned fabric stilettos, also said it was fun for the couple to co-present the Juno Award for best album in Vancouver on March 29 because they originally met presenting at the Grammys together.

“So to co-present again, we were quite sentimental about that. I think it was a very loving thing to do together to go down the red carpet together and people are elbowing me out of the way to get to him, just all the very, very great bands that are just head over heels for Elvis.”

Even U.S. President Barack Obama, was impressed with Krall’s choice of husband when she recently played Blame it on the Sun at a tribute to Stevie Wonder in Washington.

“Mr. President says to me, ‘I didn’t know your husband was Elvis Costello.’ He goes, ‘Wow, you must give him my best.’ So it’s pretty cool when the president of the United States is like going, ‘Oh, my God, your husband is Elvis Costello!’ ”

Krall is quite possibly the happiest she has ever been, having weathered what she called in another interview, a “six year grieving period,” when her mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1996 and died in 2002.

“I feel healthy and happy,” she said. “I think my kids they’re really interactive right now so they’re talking to each other and they’re talking to us and they’re giving us so much joy and the joy inspires the music and you do better music because you’re happy with your family and you’re enjoying everything so when you leave the house you look forward to coming back to this beautiful, joyful life, that these little two year old angels are giving us. So, I’m still singing about sad songs and about loss and things like that but it’s just more balanced.”

Krall previously described the sexy and intimate sounding Quiet Nights — which features the title track written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and also his The Boy From Ipanema — as “a love letter” to Costello.

“I didn’t have a concept in mind of making something sexy, it just kind of come out that way,” she says now.

“A lot of people have said ‘Well, this is a really slow record,’ and I’m like, ‘Yes it is.’ I don’t think it’s an album to play while you‚re doing your Jane Fonda workout! I would listen to it when I’m chillin‚ at home with a glass of wine and wanting to listen or wanting to just have a quiet night.”

Krall says she was inspired after performing in Brazil for a DVD release combined with her desire to work again with arranger Claus Ogerman — who worked on her 2001 album, The Look Of Love — and on many seminal bossa nova recordings when the sound first emerged in the ’60s.

“So I started listening again to the (1967) Sinatra (-Jobim) album and I listened to Quiet Nights and I really related to the English lyrics, cause I related it to home, I related it to the mountains and the sea — ‘how lovely, this is where I want to be, here with you so close to me,’ — it just reminded me of our home in Vancouver,” she said.

Still, she recorded another song, I’ve Grown Accustomed to His Face, as a surprise for her husband.

“That’s very personal to Elvis and I, that song, and I sang that as a surprise for him because that’s one of his favourite songs,” she said.

Playing piano (and gin rummy) with Barbra Streisand

Diana Krall found herself not only producing Barbra Streisand’s new album from last November until this February but also playing piano on the disc which still doesn’t have a title or release date.

The two women met ten years ago and when the Nanaimo, B.C., singer became pregnant more recently (her twins are now two and a half years old), Streisand called to say she was getting ready to tour again and needed “some songs to be inspired by.”

“And so I sent her some CDs and sent her some music and her manager and her main guy from Columbia, Jay Landers, I think encouraged her and called my management a couple of times,” said Krall. “And then we had a meeting about it. And I said, ‘Are you interested in doing a record the way I make records? Because this is the only way I know how to make records is we do it pretty much live.’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ ”

Krall said they started listening to music together at Streisand’s house and Barbra — who is a fan of such jazz greats as Shirley Horn and Nancy Wilson — wound up recording songs like Here’s to Life, Where do You Start, Love Dance, and You Must Believe in Spring.

“She did a couple of songs just with piano which I think are just brilliant. And my job is to make sure she’s happy and comfortable and inspired in what she’s doing. That I’m not taking her out of something that’s so far from (her) reality. I’m trying to just like strip things down a little bit.”

And while Streisand lived up to her reputation — “she is tough, she is a perfectionist, all true,” said Krall — the two women had a grand time together both in and out of the studio.

“One of my favourite moments with her was when we played cards,” said Krall. “We playing gin rummy together in the studio. We had been planning on playing cards at her house but so far we’ve watched movies there and things like that.”

Still, it seems a shame that they never wound up recording a duet together.

“We were planning on a duet, we were trying to find the right tune, and our schedules are so insane that I don’t know when we can find a moment to do that, if we can, then we will, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I think it’s her album. I don’t have to be singing on it. And I know some people will say, ‘Well, that’s not right.’ But it’s a beautiful album and it’s about her.”

http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/K/Krall_Diana/2009/04/09/9067221-sun.html