Krall, Schuur bring all that jazz for one smooth night in Oh

[johnfoyle]

http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/ ... 139501.xml

Krall, Schuur bring all that jazz for one smooth night in Ohio
Friday, June 25, 2004
Carlo Wolff
Special to The Plain Dealer
Saturday night offers an embarrassment of jazz riches when two vocalists of nearly the same first name perform in the area.

Diana Krall, the Canadian chanteuse who has become a hot-selling jazz artist in the past five years, plays Blossom Music Center. Diane Schuur, or "Deedles," a Grammy Award winner who's often played the area, comes to Severance Hall for a fund-raiser benefiting Maximum Independent Living, a nonprofit group providing housing and services for people with physical disabilities.


The two have little in common but their names (almost) and this unusual accident of timing. If only one could go to both.

Krall is touring behind "The Girl in the Other Room," her eighth, and some say best, album. Not only is it her first effort behind the boards she co-produced it with Cleveland native and longtime mentor Tommy LiPuma it marks her first collaboration with husband Elvis Costello, the chameleon pop figure. Costello wrote the lyrics, Krall the music.

"I really didn't have the confidence to write lyrics," Krall said by phone from Toronto. "When you have a partner like that, you're going to trust his judgment. He understands standards form. He has worked with Burt Bacharach, and he's not willing to be put in a kind of box."

Krall didn't want to do yet another update of the great American songbook. There are several interesting original tunes on the album: the rueful "Abandoned Masquerade," the world-weary, yet determined "I'm Coming Through." But the album also features interesting, slightly offbeat contemporary tunes by Mose Allison, Joni Mitchell (a touchstone for Krall), Tom Waits and Chris Smither.

"I've been listening to Tom Waits since I was a kid," said Krall, 39. "My dad had Nighthawks at the Diner,' and I was really into him hard. Some of those artists were so unique, like Joni Mitchell. I guess it was sort of my time to write."

When Krall met Costello at the 2002 Grammy Awards, they talked about collaborating, discovering a mutual respect. "It's a very natural thing," she said. "It was really an incredibly creative experience that had no other things surrounding it. I thought we'd maybe write one tune together."

Before she and LiPuma settled on the 12 songs that made it onto the release, they recorded 20 or 21.

"The album kind of very organically made itself," she said. "It was very clear that certain things didn't fit." She considers it a jazzy, organic album, and a personal one. "Every record I've made has been so highly personal," Krall said. "If people can relate to it, that's what matters."

On tour since February, she has been crafting sets that feature largely new material but also a good amount of the older Krall favorites, such as "Let's Face the Music and Dance."

"The thing in my life is to find balance in everything. You have home and work. We're both very hardworking people who love what we do," Krall said of her marriage. "Therein lies the key to it. We respect each other and what we love."

Where Krall is cool, even intellectual, Schuur is more extroverted and, at the same time, bluesier. Schuur's latest effort, the refined, swinging "Midnight," was a collaboration with Barry Manilow, who's better known for pop than jazz. At her Severance Hall concert, Schuur will showcase material from "Midnight," along with such fan favorites as "Teach Me Tonight" and "Deedle's Blues."

In a recent telephone interview from Orlando, Fla., Schuur, who has been blind since she was an infant, said that what turns her on to a song is "a good lyric and a good melody."

That's why she so enjoyed working with Manilow, said Schuur, 50. She considers Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel and people who have written for Bonnie Raitt good contemporary songwriters, and she's likely to use material by them on her upcoming album.

She has been touring nonstop, except for an unscheduled break in late April to have her gall bladder removed. Next month, Schuur goes to Europe, winding up at the end of July at Ronnie Scott's legendary London club.

"It is two shows a night, and it's hard work," Schuur said of the Scott's gig. "It's getting up on stage and giving the people what they came for. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't do it."

Wolff is a free-lance writer from South Euclid.

To reach Carlo Wolff:

entertainment@plaind.com



© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.