Straits Times (Singapore)

[scielle]

Straits Times
29 March 2005
Blessed Union
Sujin Thomas

Jazz singer-pianist Diana Krall says she has been blessed since the day she met her husband, singer-songwriter Elvis Costello

ABSENT was the glacial iciness of her onstage persona.

It was a distinctly affable Diana Krall on the phone from her home in Vancouver Island, Canada, earlier this month.

'It's not a bad connection actually,' she chirped, sounding genuinely surprised at the clarity of the line.

The introduction was prophetic.

The Canadian singer-pianist, well known for her sultry voice and unflappable cool-blonde demeanour during her performances, was warm and forthcoming.

Where other celebrities would keep their private lives under wraps, the 40-year-old willingly volunteered information on her husband of two years, legendary London-born singer-songwriter Elvis Costello.

Indeed, the artist, who performs here at Suntec City next Wednesday, was disarmingly open.

'I was just playing some things to him over the phone, saying: 'What do you think of this?' It's exciting to play it for a person that you admire and respect and an artist who also happens to love you.'

Their relationship, it seems, has enriched her musicianship as she now has someone who 'loves me enough to tell me what he thinks'.

The couple met at the 44th Grammy Awards at Los Angeles in February 2002.

After a year of whirlwind romance, they held a private wedding at Elton John's mansion in Surrey in December 2003.

The marriage is a first for her and the third for Costello, 50. He had split from his wife of 16 years, Pogues' bassist Cait O'Riordan, for slightly over a year before he married Krall.

For the latter, marriage has been fruitful on the artistic level, too.

She regards Costello, who is famous for his post-punk classics like Alison and This Year's Girl, as an equal life partner as well as a songwriting collaborator.

Calling him the 'love of my life', she gushed: 'I give him music and it's great personally, professionally, spiritually. I was very blessed from the day I met him.'

Their musical chemistry is clearly evident on her eighth album, last year's The Girl In The Other Room, where the pair co-wrote six songs on it.

Traumatic times

IN A sense, meeting Costello was the stabilising factor in her life when she was going through a period of emotional turmoil.

She had to witness her mother, Adella, getting a relapse of bone marrow cancer in May 2002. Adella, 60, eventually died from it.

Krall also had to deal with the death of her music teacher, jazz bassist Ray Brown, 75, who died in his sleep two months later, in July 2002.

She was a student of Brown's, who had played bass for the Oscar Peterson Trio and worked with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie Parker.

In 1983, Krall was playing in a restaurant in her hometown, Nanaimo, in British Columbia when she was discovered by American jazz drummer Jeff Hamilton. The latter took Brown to watch her play.

Of Brown, she said: 'He was just one of the most important people and forces in my life, so I still keep him with me as close as I can through music.'

A photograph of him sits on her piano in her Vancouver home as a reminder of his legacy.

Another legend she misses is her mentor, American singer-pianist Jimmy Rowles, who died at the age of 78 in 1996 of a heart attack.

She studied jazz under him when she went to Los Angeles on a Canadian Arts Council grant in the mid-1980s. He encouraged her to attempt singing to accompany her piano-playing.

She sees him as a pillar of strength. 'I was struggling at the same time with my mother who was first diagnosed with cancer. It was a very complex time,' she recalled.

Rowles died while her mother was undergoing a bone marrow transplant operation, she revealed.

These days, she remembers him by listening to his music and staying in touch with his daughter, Stacy, who is a respected flugelhornist in her own right.

'There's comfort there. I can use my imagination along with the recordings that I have of him.'

And she has learnt a lot from him to be proud of. 'I've found that singing and learning melodies were the most important things in being a jazz pianist.'

Hard work has paid off

FROM her various mentors, she has imbibed valuable lessons which have contributed to her jazz-pop crossover success.

She cited icons like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald for staying 'pretty true to melodies' and being 'interesting at the same time'.

Her hard work has paid off.

While she has her fair share of detractors who consider her a commercial sell-out, she has nevertheless made jazz less stodgy and more appealing to the mainstream audience.

She has sold more than 10 million copies of her albums and won two Grammy awards so far, namely Best Jazz Vocal Performance in 1999 for the album, When I Look In Your Eyes, and another for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2002 for Live In Paris.

Singaporeans are in for a treat then when she performs her fourth concert here next week. She has fond memories of Singapore, calling it a 'really special place' where she can 'enjoy the cultures' and the audience is 'warm and gracious'.

As she emphasised, performance means more to her than just going through the motion of a concert's proceedings.

'When you're loving it so much, the audience can't help but feel that way too.

You don't need to be a jazz aficionado to feel that which is swinging, you know?'

Quick facts about Diana Krall

She was the older of two girls born to accountant Jim Krall and teacher Adella in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada in 1964.

Her father had an extensive collection of jazz records that she listened to constantly, even to this day.

By the time she was 15, she was playing piano professionally as a regular act at a local bar.

In 1981, she received a Vancouver Jazz festival Scholarship and attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Her debut album, Stepping Out, was released in 1993 on a Canadian record label, Justin Time Records. It featured her mentor, bassist Ray Brown, drummer Jeff Hamilton and double bassist John Clayton.

She now lives in New York with her husband Elvis Costello. They also share a house on Vancouver Island.

[char44256]

Thanks Scielle for this post. I'm glad to see that our favorite jazz performer is so very happy.

Char

[Eric in Long Beach]

I agree.