FTMO Articles/ Reviews

[scielle]

From Jazzwise (http://www.jazzwise.com/news/item/2382)

Diana Krall
From This Moment On
Diana Krall (v, p), Terrell Strafford (t), Gil Castellanos (t), Sal Cracchiolo (t, flhn), Jeff Clayton (as), Rickey Woodard (s), Gerald Clayton (p), Tamir Hendelman (p), Anthony Wilson (g), John Clayton (b), Jeff Hamilton (d) and the Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Rec. 2006
After her much-praised segue into co-writing on The Girl In the Other Room, the jazz world’s favourite poster girl re-embraces the songbook with a big, British Columbia bear hug. With her trusty A-team, co-producer Tommy LiPuma, engineer Al Schmitt and arranger/bandleader John Clayton, on hand to keep interpretations fresh, Krall takes palpable delight in delivering 11 of her favourite tunes, most of which she’s been singing and playing since childhood. It shows: tracks such as ‘Day In, Day Out’, ‘Come Dance With Me’ and ‘It Could Happen To You’ have been reworked with obvious knowledge.
Krall’s skills as a pianist have never been in doubt but here her voice seems richer, her phrasing more natural, her timing very often inspired – particularly on an unhurried, soon-come version of Irving Berlin’s ‘Isn’t It A Lovely Day’. It’s the ensemble playing, though, which really marks this out as a good ‘un – the thoughtful guitar of Anthony Wilson on ‘Exactly Like You’; Terrell Stafford’s trumpet solo on ‘Isn’t This...’, the musical empathy throughout. Sure, it would be nice to have more Krall originals. But for the time being, here’s the gal at her best.
Jane Cornwell


Feature (this is just an excerpt... you've got to subscribe for the rest):

Diana Krall - Little Girl Blue
Diana Krall hates labels as she detests the feeling of being boxed in. Embarrassed at being thought of as a new Ella Fitzgerald, she tells Jane Cornwell how she has moved on from the last, deeply felt album of songs many of which were co-written with husband Elvis Costello. It’s time instead to embrace again her roots, to explore richly satisfying jazz standards such as ‘Day in, Day Out’, ‘Exactly Like You’ and ‘From This Moment On’, the title track of the new album out this month, co-produced with Tommy LiPuma. The Canadian pianist and singer made her name internationally by immersing herself in the classic jazz vocal songbook, encouraged by the great bassist Ray Brown, and on the new album she returns to the fold in the company of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. As she embarks on a new happier stage in her life, in the public eye more than ever before as a jazz superstar and an expectant mother, she explodes some commonly held notions about her career, explains what she really wants to achieve in jazz and settles some old scores.
The pianist tinkling the ivories in the dining room of Claridges has no idea who the guest in Suite 301 is. This is probably a good thing, news that Diana Krall is in the building might well cause their fingers to seize in the middle of ‘Against All Odds’, or whatever cheesy track it is they’re playing. Notes waft blandly around the art deco surroundings, diners chat, clink glasses and dab at their mouths, oblivious. Waiting there I imagine someone else making music in the corner, someone who befits the glamorous decor. Someone from the Golden Era of song making, say Cole Porter, Ella Fitzgerald or Nat King Cole in his prime. And given her oeuvre, even Krall herself. Blonde hair in a pompadour, long legs in nylon stockings, wielding her emotive, lived-in alto.
The jazz superstar probably isn’t about to sashay in, elbow the hapless pianist off the bench and launch into a selection of standards off her new, tenth album, From This Moment On. A beautifully arranged, deftly produced, swinging triumph of an album, buoyed by Krall’s illustrious trio – Anthony Wilson on guitar, Jeff Hamilton on drums, John Clayton on upright bass – and the rather magnificent Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. With a title borrowed from Cole Porter’s romantic ode to great expectations (‘No more blue songs/Only whoop de do songs’), her new album boasts 11 tunes that, taken together, form an upbeat, cohesive whole. Which, as it turns out, wasn’t specifically the intention.
In planning her follow-up to 2004’s The Girl In the Other Room, an introspective bundle of covers and, pretty much a first for Krall, originals co-written with her husband, Elvis Costello, Krall simply jotted down a list of songs. Many had been in her back pocket for years: ‘Day In, Day Out’, which the 41-year-old began working on in her late teens, when a student at Boston’s Berklee College of Music; ‘How Insensitive’, which she’s been figuring out for a decade; ‘I Was Doing All Right’, ‘Come Dance With Me’ and ‘You Can Depend On Me’, all of which she’d listened to as a girl in Nanaimo in British Columbia. They are a legacy of her record-collecting, stride piano-playing dad, Jim, an accountant. She says she was practising by playing along to Fats Waller, the moment her feet reached the pedals. Duke Ellington seduced her at an early age. So did Fred Astaire, Count Basie and Ray Brown. There are traces of all of them on the new album, just as there are traces of Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Horn and Sarah Vaughan. But thanks in part to long-time producer Tommy LiPuma and arranger/bandleader John Clayton, Diana Krall still sounds like no one other than Diana Krall. Her delivery is more confident, too; her phrases even more perfectly placed. Sure, there’s a moment on her delicate rendition of ‘Little Girl Blue’ when it could be Joni Mitchell singing the line ‘Count your fingers’ – which delights Krall no end when it’s suggested to her later. (“Really? That’s a nice compliment. If I was going to want to sound like anybody it would be her.”) Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery – more so, perhaps, when it’s completely unconscious.
“Isn’t it a lov-e-ly day... to be... caught... in the rain.”


Telegraph (UK) - Peter Culshaw

"No more blue songs/ only whoop-de-doo songs". In the words of the Cole Porter title track, Diana Krall is in upbeat mode on her 10th album. Domestic bliss with her husband Elvis Costello has contributed to her cheery state, she says.

While she has recently covered contemporary artists such as Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell and co-written with Costello, she has reverted here to the previous era of American songwriters such as the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart and Sammy Cahn.

This might seem a retrograde step, especially as thousands of jazz singers everywhere think they can sing songs like Day In, Day Out or Come Dance With Me. But, apart from her distinctive, low, sultry voice, what they haven't got is Krall's big band of first-rate musicians, who are here impeccably recorded in the totemic Capitol studios in Hollywood, where Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole recorded, and whose ghosts seem to haunt this record.

Krall has a rare awareness of her capabilities and uses her voice like an instrument, which she blends perfectly with inventive arrangements from long-time collaborator John Clayton. She does a superb job of co-producing — from a delicate brush on the drums to the stabs of the brass, you can hear every precise detail in living stereo. If at times a little knowing, this is a truly sophisticated (before that word was diluted through over-use) record of tenderness, intelligence and humour.

[Coda]

Nice reviews. Can't wait 'til I can buy the album.

[johnfoyle]

A Swedish interview ; maybe someone could have a look and see if there's anything new in it.

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=2198&a=571493


This cool photo is featured -



Foto: Erich Stering

[johnfoyle]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 44882.html

The Sunday Times ( London) September 10, 2006


DIANA KRALL

From This Moment On
Verve 1705042

Classy, classy, classy: Diana Krall is one of those rare talents who could make a recipe for spaghetti carbonara sound seductive. Fans who were caught off balance by her plunge into moody, singer-songwriter introspection on The Girl in the Other Room will be relieved to hear that the woman who is now hitched to Elvis Costello has returned to straightforward romantic standards, with a big band thrown in for good measure. John Clayton’s arrangements are well upholstered but anodyne, and there are moments, as ever, when you wish Krall would open up just a shade more. But her taut, pensive phrasing on Little Girl Blue is worth the price of admission on its own. Three stars

[verena]

Glad to learn that a distinguished critic was struck by "Little Girl Blue" just as I was.

John, I don't know how it was done for the recording, but at the concert I attented in the south of France the cello sound was done by John Clayton with the bass. I told him how much I liked the arrangement for this song and he said Diana wrote it. So I wanted to praise her about that, and I forgot !

[johnfoyle]

the cello sound was done by John Clayton with the bass

Thanks for the info. ; if Diana had turned up at Elvis' shows in Amsterdam last week I was going to ask her!

[Coda]

Reading about making a recipe for spaghetti carbonara sound seductive, I remember an episode of the old TV show "M*A*S*H" where the doctors were reading 'bedtime stories' to some Korean children by reading old army manuals -- it was all in the delivery!

[Bud]

Billboard: http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/reviews/ ... 1003122623

From This Moment On
DIANA KRALL
Release Date: September 19, 2006
Producer(s): Diana Krall, Tommy LiPuma
Genre: JAZZ
Label: Verve
On 2004's "The Girl in the Other Room," Krall gambled that she would not alienate her standards-adoring fans by offering self-composed songs for the first time. The album triumphed, creatively and commercially, but on "From This Moment On," Krall abstains from originals and returns to the well, delivering a remarkably rendered collection of tunes penned by the likes of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and the Gershwins. Singing with impeccable phrasing, displaying top-tier piano prowess and enlisting the lush support of the Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra for eight of the 11 numbers, Krall exudes spunk and romance. Among the noteworthy tracks are a samba-inflected "How Insensitive" and a lusciously wistful take on "Little Girl Blue." This, her 10th release, marks Krall's finest hour to date and firmly establishes her status as jazz's premier female song stylist. —Dan Ouellette

[scielle]

Princess Diana of jazz is back - and how

Dave Gelly
Sunday September 17, 2006
The Observer

Jazz fans and lovers of classic American song will greet this album with a sigh of relief. Ever since her 2004 release, The Girl in the Other Room , which featured half-a-dozen rather nondescript songs written with Elvis Costello, there have been fears that Diana Krall may have gone a bit, well, flaky. But, happily, this is the real deal.

It wouldn't matter if she were just your average wannabe diva, but she's not. Krall has an immense talent, not just as a singer but as a pianist, too, and is the best self-accompanying jazz vocalist to appear since the late Shirley Horn. She can bring utter stillness to a concert hall with one exquisitely timed note and, a few minutes later, swing the whole place joyously into the middle of next week.

On seven of these 12 tracks, she is accompanied by the Clayton- Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and on the remaining five by her regular quartet. In some respects, the quartet numbers are the more satisfying, because of the interaction between voice and piano. Singing while plonking down a few chords is one thing; creating a complete harmonic and melodic underlay and, in effect, conducting a musical dialogue with yourself calls for quite remarkable skill. This CD being a highly produced artefact, it may be that she recorded both parts separately, but I've heard her in person many times and, believe me, she can do it.

Speaking of production, this is about as lavish as they come. The list of credits goes on for ever, revealing, among other things, that the titles of arranger and orchestrator now refer to separate functions. I wonder what Duke Ellington would have made of that. Anyway, John Clayton and Chris Walden between them create some beautiful, warm orchestral sounds, particularly on the ballad 'Willow Weep For Me' and the slow bossa nova 'How Insensitive' on which Krall surpasses herself .

Jazz and the classic American song grew up together. If that vital connection is to be kept alive and kicking, it needs artists with Diana Krall's talent, understanding and - just as important - high profile. A profound sigh of relief all round, then.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1874170,00.html

[johnfoyle]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/arts/ ... 7hold.html


Ruby Washington/The New York Times

The singer and pianist Diana Krall at the Village Vanguard. Her 10th album, “From This Moment On,” is being released this week. She and her husband, Elvis Costello, are expecting twins in December.

September 17, 2006
Music

Playing It by Ear, in Her Life if Not Her Art

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

DIANA KRALL’S life is about to change. Sometime in early December, this Canadian jazz singer and pianist, who turns 42 on Nov. 16, is expecting to give birth to twins.

“I never thought I would have this,” she said. “I already had so much to be thankful for that I’d kind of accepted that I would be alone.”

Ms. Krall was sitting at a table in the Village Vanguard, the New York jazz cellar where time seems suspended in a musty 1950’s haze. Although she has never performed there, she chose to be interviewed and photographed at the Vanguard because of its timeless jazz ambience and its proximity to the apartment she shares with Elvis Costello, the British singer-songwriter she married in December 2003. It is one of two homes they share, the other being in her hometown, Vancouver.

“I have no idea what lies ahead, and I don’t know a lot of people in this situation who do,” she said, when asked if she was fearful about the wrenching changes having twins is certain to bring. “Elvis and I will play it by ear. Both of us tend to be very self-sufficient. We don’t have a lot of people around. Now we’re going to have to have them. I’m learning to ask for help and am in the process of getting a nanny.”

This week Ms. Krall’s longtime label, Verve Records, will release her 10th album, “From This Moment On,” a swinging big-band record made with many of the same musicians who accompanied her on her exuberant 2005 holiday album, “Christmas Songs.” Eight of its 11 songs, all standards, were recorded with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. On three others, including a dreamily reflective “Little Girl Blue” that she says was partly inspired by listening to Puccini, she sings with a quartet that includes her longtime colleagues Anthony Wilson on guitar and the co-leaders of the orchestra, John Clayton on bass and Jeff Hamilton on drums. Ms. Krall herself plays piano.

The urge to make a big-band album — after releasing two blockbuster records with strings, then taking a risky plunge into the singer-songwriter realm — came while she was on tour in France.

“We were at dinner on a day off, and everyone was talking and drinking wine, and ‘Sinatra at the Sands’ came on,” she recalled. “This was an album I’ve heard since I was 15. I looked across the table at Jeff and started singing along to ‘April in Paris.’ And Clayton yelled, ‘D, we have to do that.’ ”

“Christmas Songs” became the trial run for her new record.

A strapping 5 foot 8 with a thick mane of hair the color of wild honey, Ms. Krall was voluptuously pregnant in a black cocktail dress. Everything she said came in short, nervous bursts, which she edited and qualified as she went along.

She still has traces of the slightly gawky woman she used to be in the 90’s, when she exuded a palpable discomfort with her own body in nightclub performances at which she sometimes appeared to hide behind the piano. In those days she rarely spoke from the stage and walked on and off with the hunched posture of someone shrinking from the spotlight.

With her blond hair, deep voice and air of inscrutability, she resembled the Kathleen Turner of “Body Heat,” but without Ms. Turner’s commanding self-assurance and dangerous erotic force field. Even now she is admittedly very shy and reluctant to talk about her personal life. But she has come a long way out of her shell; today she radiates a subdued glamour along with a tentative confidence, with the emphasis on tentative.

The metamorphosis began around the time she attained the kind of global success rarely enjoyed by a jazz performer with her 1999 album, “When I Look in Your Eyes.” That record, lushly orchestrated by Johnny Mandel, was followed two years later by the even more opulent, bossa-nova-flavored “Look of Love,” orchestrated by Claus Ogerman, the German-born arranger of classic albums like “The Bill Evans Trio With Symphony Orchestra,” “Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim” and most significant “Amoroso,” the 1970 album by the Brazilian bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto, to whom she paid tribute with sultry covers of “ ’S Wonderful” and “Bésame Mucho.”

“The Look of Love” sold 1.6 million copies in the United States and cinched her status as a major international pop-jazz star. Of all the albums of orchestrated popular standards put out since Linda Ronstadt revived the style in 1983 with Nelson Riddle, “When I Look in Your Eyes” and “The Look of Love” are the only ones that come close to matching the 50’s and 60’s classics by Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole.

The reasons are obvious. Unlike the folk-pop singers who embraced standards late in their careers, Ms. Krall is a workhorse who has been immersed in jazz since childhood and has played with jazz musicians for two decades. She attended the Berklee School of Music for three semesters and has transcribed much of the music by her favorite pianists. For the last decade she has spent up to 300 days a year on the road.

In retrospect, Ms. Krall said, she realizes that “The Look of Love” was a deeply personal album whose songs anticipated the death of her mother from multiple myeloma in 2002. She ticks off four song titles that reflect that loss: “Maybe You’ll Be There,” “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” “Love Letters” and “I Remember You.” Two close friends and musical mentors, Rosemary Clooney and the bassist Ray Brown, died only weeks after her mother.

Several months later Ms. Krall met and fell in love with Mr. Costello, and they married three years ago this December. With his encouragement she took a risky career leap and reinvented herself as a singer-songwriter with her album “The Girl in the Other Room.” With Mr. Costello she wrote six songs, composing the music herself and writing outlines of the lyrics, which he polished in a painstaking back-and-forth collaboration.

But when the record came out, a significant segment of her fan base felt betrayed by her abrupt abandonment of standards in favor of a spikier, sparer contemporary style. Unlike the luscious tonal baths of her records with strings, “The Girl in the Other Room” demanded the listener’s close attention. At her concerts there were walkouts, and sales of “The Girl in the Other Room,” while healthy (860,000), were a little more than half those of “The Look of Love.”

Although Ms. Krall was stung by the mixed reception, she seems philosophical about it. “It was emotionally exhausting, heavy-duty work,” she said. “If I hadn’t explored it, I couldn’t do what I’m doing now. Writing lyrics is the hardest thing.”

Since then Ms. Krall has written at least one song with Mr. Costello, which she says is too difficult for her to sing, and she has not ruled out the possibility of returning to songwriting for a possible future project that would mix originals with standards.

“The Girl in the Other Room” was at least an honorable failure. Its knotty, impressionistic songs, like “Departure Bay,” aimed as high artistically, within the singer-songwriter genre, as her traditional pop-jazz records.

For someone so accomplished, Ms. Krall accepts praise warily. Unlike Harry Connick Jr. — the only other jazz singer and pianist of her generation to attain comparable success, and a performer with an ego that matches his talent — Ms. Krall is fiercely self-critical.

Complimented on her hard-swinging voice-and-piano version of “ ’Deed I Do,” on her concert DVD “Live in Paris,” she frets that she was so nervous during the performance that she injected too many quotations from other songs into her piano improvisation.

Praise for her increasingly virtuosic pianism prompts her to reel off the names of idols and role models, from Nat King Cole to Fats Waller to Jimmy Rowles (her most influential teacher) to Oscar Peterson, whom she insists are far more accomplished.

Of her singing, which she took up relatively late, at 26, she said, “I have a limited register,” forgetting that Billie Holiday, one of her many singing idols, had an even more limited range. “But I think I have a feel,” she acknowledged cautiously.

The list of her favorite singers is as long as her list of admired pianists. It includes Holiday, Ernestine Anderson, Bing Crosby and Carmen McRae, who also played piano and whose influence is most prominent on Ms. Krall’s early albums.

Whether or not the rough-and-tumble big-band jazz of “From This Moment On” matches the commercial success of Ms. Krall’s records with strings, it should put to rest any lingering doubts about her ability to swing. From the beginning of her career she has been dogged by envy and condescension from old-time jazz critics and musicians who resent her commercial success. Many critics hold that an authentic jazz artist should be a black American who has lived through hard times, and not a blond, middle-class woman from Vancouver.

But for Ms. Krall jazz rhythm has always come first. Songs are delivered in extended, spontaneous, loop-the-loop phrases with bent notes in performances that spring directly from her dialogue with her musicians as they playfully bounce around sounds and ideas. Even when the setting is orchestral, she doesn’t sing above the music so much as with it.

Her phrasing is usually curt; notes at the ends of passages are rarely drawn out for pretty effects. Her vocal timbre is continually changing: hornlike one second, whispery the next, then settling on a bright, vibrant vowel sound charged with emotion; she characteristically lingers sensuously over the sound of the letter L.

Her interpretive approach to torch singing is modern in its refusal to wallow in heartbreak and dependence on a lover, in the languid manner of an earlier generation of pop-jazz divas. The coordination between her singing and piano playing is often astonishing. On the “Live in Paris” DVD, the affection and respect exchanged between Ms. Krall and her musicians is palpable.

Beyond her shyness, and her tendency to worry over details, is a performer with a formidable drive and independent spirit. This is a woman, after all, who instead of taking the conventional route of going to college, getting a degree and settling down to raise a family, lit out for Los Angeles by herself at 19 to follow her dream.

Her urge to charge forward has propelled her to where she is today. “I’m not one to sit around,” she said. “I like high adrenaline. I’m the last one to fall down and the first one to say, ‘I may be tired, but I’ll keep going.’ ”

[scielle]

We don’t have a lot of people around. Now we’re going to have to have them. I’m learning to ask for help and am in the process of getting a nanny.

I'd venture to say that all of us here are available at reasonable prices!

[jazzygal karla]

(Hmm...Customer service at a bank Call Centre, or au pair for a pair of kids with such illustrious parents...)

Your comment gave me a good giggle, scielle. Some of us might even do it for free. Child care is more like a vocation than a job, really. I'd hate to have to pay someone to take 'long-term' care of my kids if I ever have any. It's a sad thing that so many people don't often have a choice in the matter...

But what a terrific piece by Ruby Washington! I found mself nodding along with several things she wrote about 'Ms. Krall', and got to thinking, don't you just wanna give Diana a big hug ? For all her reticence and self-criticism, in-sentence editing and qualifying remarks as she speaks, (which I personally think springs from a desire to get everything as close to perfection as she can), I'd love to tell Diana: "You're amazing. Thanks for everything you've done and the journey you've taken us with your music. Thanks for sharing those moments that were joyful and painful, even if 'the critics' thought it was wanting or 'selling out' or (travesty!) not real jazz."

Diana Krall, you're somethin' else!

(I also have to admit I was pretty shocked to hear about those walk-outs at her concerts...how rude!)

[Coda]

I'd say the walk-outs would be extremely rude! Were these people SO completely uninformed about the nature of GITOR when they bought the tickets to the concert? Or did some sponsor buy the tickets and give them out to unappreciative/close-minded people?

Overall, I thought the interview was terrific. But I can't get over people thinking that somehow Diana had forgotten how to swing -- give her a little credit here -- just because she cut an album that was a change of pace.

We were watching (on tape) an old PBS show about Mary Pickford, and I found it interesting that Pickford had tried to break out to play roles other than the stereotypical roles she had become famous for -- and her fan base rebelled big time. A familiar story, it seems.

However, I think that it's sometimes difficult for fans to digest a whole album in a different style. My very humble suggestion for the future is that, if Diana does pen another song or two that she wants to record, perhaps she could cut only one original song at a time on an otherwise don't-rock-the-boat album. It might be more digestible that way for fans with delicate stomachs.

[Coda]

I did pick up People magazine in the check-out line while grocery shopping tonight. I liked the article. By the way, Diana, since you asked what is a onesie, it's a one-piece little outfit with short-sleeves and snaps at the crotch -- easy for changing those diapers!

[johnfoyle]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/albums.shtml

U.K. Top 40 Albums : 17.09.2006

29 NEW
New Entry (-)
Diana Krall
From This Moment On

(Verve)

[johnfoyle]

A few 'new bits' in this -

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news ... 21&k=35940

Krall up
Impending motherhood has inspired Canada's premier jazz singer to relax, face her idols and realize that sometimes, it's just the plink-plink-plink that counts

Mike Doherty
National Post

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

It is often said that for a musician, releasing an album is like giving birth. A few months away from delivering twins, and with a new album out today, Diana Krall has particular insight into this comparison: "My legs don't swell when we're doing an album!"

Sipping tea in a posh Toronto hotel room and dressed all in black, Krall looks decidedly un-swollen apart from the obvious bump. Apparently pregnancy, despite its inconveniences, had a positive effect on the recording of From This Moment On.

"I found out I was pregnant the morning I started doing this record," she recalls. "There's a relaxed feeling [in the music] -- I'm more settled in myself. There's no, 'I must write, and I must do this and I must live up to this.' I didn't have any agenda at all; I just wanted to enjoy myself and have a party."

In person, Krall seems composed and quietly self-confident. Being relaxed is key when approaching standards such as Willow Weep for Me and How Insensitive, which she covers on this record. A singer could easily freeze up with the dread of having to follow in the giant footsteps of Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Shirley Horn, Astrud Gilberto and others. Indeed, Krall admits, "There's a couple tunes that I've always wanted to do, but there are versions of them by someone I admire so much that I didn't know what I could add. Then again, you could feel that way about everything, so there has to come a time ..."

From This Moment On marks Krall's return to jazz standards after last year's Christmas Songs and 2004's The Girl in the Other Room, which featured newer pieces, some of them co-written by Krall and her husband, Elvis Costello. The new album should quiet some of her more reactionary critics -- as she notes, "I often have interviews, especially in Europe, where they say, 'You're not jazz anymore. Why aren't you sticking with the tradition?' " However, this was hardly Krall's rationale for recording the album. Although she is easily one of jazz's most commercially successful artists, she is uncomfortable compromising her sense of personal and musical freedom. She was ambivalent, for instance, when informed last year that she had won three of the inaugural Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards.

"I'm grateful for the honour," she says, "but I'm not one for labels. I don't want to be called a 'smooth jazz artist,' which seems to be to be a creation of radio. ... It really irritates me! I had to do a bunch of 'smooth jazz' IDs, and here I am, happy that radio stations are playing my music, [but] I had a problem saying, 'Hi, I'm Diana. You're listening to the smoothest, smoothest jazz.' I didn't want to be put in a category. It's usually everybody else's agenda; it's not the artist."

Krall's own aesthetic agenda seems to have less to do with being "smooth" and more with contributing a mix of emotion and stateliness to the songs she sings. Aiding the Nanaimo, B.C., native in this quest on From This Moment On is Los Angeles-based arranger and bassist John Clayton, whose sense of big-band colour provides subtle shading. The Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra's soloists themselves add character -- clearly none of them have been encouraged to hold back and let Krall's personality dominate entirely.

On the sprightly title track, Clayton's son, Gerald, whom Krall babysat in her early twenties, sits in for the singer on piano and unleashes some fleet, tasty runs. Krall describes his playing as "brilliant," but when asked whether being accompanied by someone else provides more freedom, her answer is a surprising "no."

"The nice thing about accompanying yourself is that you don't oversing. I think I can tend to fill in spaces that aren't necessary. I keep that more in mind now when I'm being accompanied, to just let the time go by."

The ideas of maturity and hard-earned wisdom come up time and again in Krall's conversation, as if the prospect of having children has given her a new perspective in her work. For one thing, she has been learning to not feel intimidated by her idols. At a ceremony last year for the unveiling of Oscar Peterson's postage stamp in Toronto, Krall played the great pianist's tune When Summer Comes, and sang lyrics written by Costello. Krall's visible nerves merely contributed to the moving quality of her performance -- there was nary a dry eye in the audience. Afterwards, she recalls, Peterson and his family invited Krall and Costello to their Mississauga home, where she played his nine-and-a-half-foot Bosendorfer grand piano (a.k.a. "The Box").

"You have to put aside your ego and your fears and saying, 'Oh my God, it's Oscar Peterson! I'm going to suck' -- and enjoy the moment," she says. "We ended up playing and singing Nat Cole tunes together, and Elvis sang with him too. It became one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in my life."

Earlier this year, Krall was pleasantly shocked to be asked to write the foreword to Volume Six of the Complete Peanuts anthologies: "I thought, 'Holy shit!' -- pardon my language. Garrison Keillor wrote [a foreword], and Walter Cronkite, and I have pictures of my sister and me when I was a little girl, with my dad drawing Snoopy."

Composing the foreword brought her back to the reasons she recorded From This Moment On. She writes about an especially memorable Peanuts scene "where Lucy is asking Schroeder to play Jingle Bells and, to her disappointment, he runs through every grand version including one on the pipe organ until you hear Schroeder's exasperated toy piano ... 'plink plink plink, plink plink plink, plink plink plink plink pliiiiinkkkkkkkkk!!!!,' then the revelatory 'That's it!' from Lucy."

Says Krall, "That's my mantra: 'Sometimes it's just the plink-plink.' You can do all these fancy things and explore different areas, and sometimes it's just good to come back to what you know and what is simple -- getting your hands in the mud."

- From This Moment On is released today by Verve. The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962 is available from Fantagraphics Books.

Amazon US-

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Peanuts- ... 49?ie=UTF8



The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962 (Hardcover)
by Seth (Designer), Charles M. Schulz (Author), Charles M. Schulz (Author), Diana Krall (Introduction)

# Hardcover: 346 pages
# Publisher: Fantagraphics (October 2006)
# Language: English
# ISBN: 1560976721

Amazon Canada-

http://www.amazon.ca/Complete-Peanuts-1 ... &s=gateway

# Hardcover: 344 pages
# Publisher: Fantagraphics Books Inc (Sep 15 2006)
# Language: English
# ISBN: 1560976721

[johnfoyle]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/rev ... xpand=true

The Evening Standard ( London, U.K.)
Sept.20.06

JAZZ

Diana Krall
From This Moment On (Universal)
Review: Jack Massarik
****
She wed composer Elvis Costello and got a few surprisingly downbeat songs off her chest, but now Diana Krall is back to doing what she does best - giving great standards a contemporary edge. There's a new maturity and relaxation about the Canadian icequeen's sensuous vocals and hip keyboard solos as she stretches out with a slick studio big-band and her regular touring quartet, featuring her most compatible guitarist so far, Anthony Wilson. No originals here, just a dozen all-time goodies.

[Bud]

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/en ... 283325.php



Diana Krall 'From This Moment On'
Record reviews: Diana Krall retrenches, Elton John offers a sequel of sorts, Fergie regurgitates dance fluff.

A retro retrenchment from Mrs. Costello after the modern advances of "The Girl in the Other Room," but a welcome, classy one nonetheless. Reteaming with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Krall has returned to the swingin' lushness of 2001's "The Look of Love," applying her subtle piano skills and icy vocal shading to the sort of blue-mood set Sinatra regularly cut in the late '50s. The material, all standards, is choice, but as ever Krall is sharper when she's sorrowful – "How Insensitive" and "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams" are her forte, not "Come Dance With Me." (Ben Wener/The Register)

[Bud]

This article was posted elsewhere, but don't miss the video that is on the page. Its a performance on Canada AM and it includes an interview.

Video: Diana Krall performs...

Article: Krall shows happy side with From This Moment On

Updated Mon. Sep. 18 2006 12:14 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Jazz songstress Diana Krall dropped by Canada AM Monday for a world premiere of her upcoming tenth album From This Moment On and revealed the not-so-secret reason why she's happier than she's ever been.

It's not just that Krall is about to release her new CD but she and her husband Elvis Costello are also expecting twins in December.

"We're looking forward to it," Krall told Canada AM.

Krall's devoted fans are looking forward to her new album which she describes as a "hopeful and happy."

"You start choosing songs you like and it ends up being a mirror reflection of how you are at that time in your life," said Krall. "I started with From This Moment On and it became clear to me as I finished that most of the songs were very hopeful and happy and that's the way I was feeling at the time."

On 2004's The Girl in the Other Room, Krall worked with Costello and composed her own songs. ON her latest album, Krall has returned to more familiar ground -- performing older classics instead of her own material.

"I get asked this question a lot: 'How can you do these songs when they were recorded by great artists like Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald?'" said Krall. "It's humbling and at the same time it's inspiring."

Along with the title track, the new album will feature Johnny Mercer's Day In, Day Out and the Frank Sinatra classic Come Dance With Me.

"I've been listening to it (Come Dance With Me) for so many years and songs you listen to for so long change, their meaning changes. It was just the right time for me to sing it. It's very hopeful. It's a hopeful song."

The Nanaimo, B.C. native said narrowing down which songs would appear on the album was difficult.

"It's hard to do a recording of 12 songs when you'd really like to do 50 or two albums at once," she said. "Twelve songs on a record doesn't define you, it's just a snapshot of where you were at that time."

Krall said she prefers to play live because it allows her to take audiences on a journey of emotions.

"I have a huge repertoire now," said Krall. "I love to perform live because I can incorporate different and new songs and then you have this range of emotions instead of just one thing.

"Everything is not one-dimensional; you (can) feel joy and sadness at the same time."

Krall also said she strives to always try different things with her music.

"The Girl in the Other Room was an example of that," she said. "That was the most important album for me in my career because it gave me a chance to soul search and be very honest and very personal."

The personal nature of that album was fueled by the loss of Krall's mother.

"My mom passed away and still after four years it's very difficult for me and my family," she said. "This album leans more to the joyful and for that I'm grateful."

And, while she's lived in New York for more than 15 years, Krall said she is also grateful when she goes back to B.C.

"I love to live in New York but I have to be in British Columbia as well," she said. "I have to be close to nature and the spiritual connection I have with the west coast of Canada and where I grew up, the arts there and the beauty of the environment is so important to me."

From This Moment On will be in stores on Sept. 19th.

[scielle]

Some new stuff here -


Diana Krall gets set for a pregnant pause
JAZZ I In real life, the Nanaimo native is as happy and joyful as her new CD From This Moment On
John Mackie, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, September 23, 2006

Diana Krall has had a busy year. She recorded an album, toured across North America and Europe, and now is doing interviews to promote the album, From This Moment On, which was released this week.

Oh, and she's also about to become a mother for the first time, with twins. Which is why she's about to shut everything down, and soon.

"What do you do when you're seven months pregnant?" she says.

"You can't do too much. I'm already quite fatigued. So I'm going to stop, and do what the doctor tells me to do -- which I'm not quite doing. The clock is ticking, so I've got to rest. And get ready."

Not that she's complaining. The 41-year-old native of Nanaimo sounds very, very happy, laughing often during a 20-minute chat from New York.

A similar mood can be found on her new album, a swinging collection of jazz standards recorded with Krall's quartet and the Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.

"No more blue songs, only hoop dee-doo songs," she sings in Cole Porter's From This Moment On, which pretty much sums up the tone of the disc. But she said she didn't set out to make a happy record, it just sort of happened that way.

"I'm very careful about what I choose to sing," she says.

"It's an organic process. It's not like, 'I'm feeling happy now, I'm gonna do this.' You don't even think that way. You just start picking tunes, and then when you've finished the project you have about 18 tunes that you've recorded and a very natural theme starts showing that's a reflection of how you feel at that time, quite organically."

The songs she chose would be hard not to like. There's an Irving Berlin tune (Isn't This a Lovely Day), one by George and Ira Gershwin (I Was Doing Alright), and a pair by Jimmy Van Heusen (It Could Happen to You and Come Dance With Me), as well as a drop-dead gorgeous version of the Rodgers and Hart ballad Little Girl Blue.

The album was influenced by all sorts of singers of yore, from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, and Fred Astaire.

Yes, Fred Astaire.

"I think Fred Astaire is amazing, not only as a singer, but the beauty of how he sings things so simply," she says.

"The record he did with Oscar Peterson in particular was very beautiful. Louis Armstrong and Ella [made] records that weren't fast and furious tempos, they weren't slick. They were just really beautiful records, tempos were kind of medium and very relaxed and laid-back. I was really conscious of the record being relaxed, I guess."

I mention she might like a Louis Armstrong show at Kitsliano High School that was recorded by Vancouver's late, great jazz disc jockey Jack Cullen.

"Jack Cullen! I used to listen to Jack Cullen every night. That's a good point if you want to mention it -- I used to go to sleep to Jack Cullen, I'd listen to old radio shows every night before I went to sleep.

"Even now where I live on Vancouver Island . . . we have a CD player, but it's kind of hidden away and most of our music is vinyl. We have a hi-fi, but it's kind of broken, so it's tuned to the CBC and I listen to Jurgen Goeth in the afternoons a lot. It reminds me of my mom, because she listened to that show. I find I don't even watch television that much, I listen to radio more."

Krall and her husband Elvis Costello have homes all over the place: New York, London, Vancouver and Nanaimo. Will they be moving back to B.C. to raise the twins?

"Well I have been quietly living in B.C. and in New York for awhile now, for three years," she replies.

"I've had a home on Vancouver Island and I have dear friends there. I have been basically on the road [touring], but I do come home frequently. I think I've been home at least once a month for the last six months or so.

"It's really important for me to be in British Columbia, more so probably in the last few years. I wrote The Girl in the Other Room [album] out there, and Elvis has been writing out there as well. I'm drawn to it culturally as well, it's just really important for me to be there.

"I'm fortunate enough to have almost two [homes]. I don't have a split personality, but I really do need the energy of New York. My love of old films, jazz music and art, all the things I can be inspired by in New York are really important to me. However, I need to be near the mountains and the water. When I go out [to B.C.] I'm completely immersed in nature. I collect Haida art and other Canadian art. Just being there is very inspiring to me, in a very deeply spiritual way."

The Girl in the Other Room was a very personal record for Krall, who had recently lost her mother to cancer and chose to write several songs herself, rather than do all covers.

"It was a very important time for me. I wasn't able to express myself through other people's words and music, so I chose to express myself through my own, with Elvis. It was a very intense process, deep soul-searching, but I couldn't get here without going there. It was probably the most important record of my career for me, personally.

"The subject matter would change, but I would like to write again. It was an extremely intense process, and an extremely intense post-process. It was cathartic getting through it, and to go on and tour it for up to two years was emotionally intense. Definitely."

The Girl in the Other Room ends with the ballad Departure Bay, a deeply reflective song about her mother and B.C. It includes the line "I just got home and then I leave again," which more or less has been Krall's life for the past two decades: she's one of those musicians who constantly seems to be on tour.

But having twins will mean a big lifestyle change for Krall. How does she feel about getting off the tour circuit?

"Talk to me in six months. I don't know, I don't have a crystal ball. I can only do the best I can and make sure that family comes first, the happiness of me and my family. Those are the adjustments that are going to have to be made, to make sure that everybody's healthy and happy.

"Of course you have hopes of how you will do things, but I don't think you can really tell [how things will work out] until you're in it, you know? [But] I look to people who've done it and ask questions. Like, Sarah McLachlan tours. She's been a very dear friend, Sarah and her husband Ash, I bug them all the time with questions about stuff.

"Ultimately it's your own experience. You have to figure out what's best for you. But it does help to have people like that that I admire to talk with."

jmackie@png.canwest.com
604-605-2126

---------------------

FYI, here's a link to Jurgen Gothe's show on CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/discdrive/index.html