DK in Sydney - Charm and Beauty in Fine Company

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From the Sydney Morning Herald (and what a fine title!):

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Review/Charm-and-beauty-in-fine-company/2005/04/19/1113854199227.html

Diana Krall, Concert Hall, April 18
by John Shand
Apr 20.

This was a much more involving concert than Diana Krall offered three years ago. She seemed more at ease, both in her own skin and on the stage. She has improved as a singer, has some fine new songs and a band of the highest calibre.

Most of Krall's fans probably went to hear her sing. What they were presented with was a jazz quartet: her voice and piano, the guitar of Anthony Wilson, the bass of Robert Hurst and the drums of Karriem Riggins being all featured more or less equally.

This was smart on Krall's part. She may be the main attraction, but her collaborators are musical stars in their own right. Crucially, however, while her own work may sometimes be flattered by their brilliance, it is never out of place in their company. As a pianist she can draw out the drama of a song and help to propel it, or she can distil a fragile beauty with her solo accompaniment.

Her singing glows more than it used to. Krall can now nail a song such as Boulevard of Broken Dreams so much more convincingly than when she recorded it a decade ago, aided by an evocative arrangement in which the guitar curled around sparse bass and drums with a slight aura of echo.

She tore across Devil May Care at a dangerous tempo (against fiery lighting on the curtains framing the mountainous landscape backdrop), and slumped into tenderness for You Call It Madness.

Much of her best singing came on the songs written with her husband, Elvis Costello, where her emotional commitment seemed intrinsically heightened. The Girl in the Other Room, Abandoned Masquerade and the solo encore, Departure Bay, are beautifully crafted pieces replete with musical surprise, and they all pulsed with intensity.

If being tied to the piano - even when not playing - was still Krall's security blanket, she was chattier, more charming and more relaxed than before, swivelling her endless legs around to face Riggins whenever he took one of his startling solos. Hurst, too, was routinely extraordinary, although his sound was not quite as warm in the Concert Hall as it may be elsewhere (just as the piano was a little shrill on occasion).

Wilson produced many telling solos, including biting deep into Tom Waits's Temptation, another song that Krall made her own.