'Kralling' Home
Vancouver's Laila Biali opens for Diana Krall at the Vancouver Jazz Festival.
By Caroline Dobuzinskis
BC's twenty-four year old Laila Biali received double honors Tuesday at this year's National Jazz Awards in the categories of keyboardist and composer. And this Saturday, the Laila Biali Trio will perform as Diana Krall's opening act for the kick off Vancouver's International Jazz Festival.
Comparisons to Krall began well before this. "You know, I get excited when people say things to me like you are going to be the next Diana Krall," Biali told The Tyee. But even though Biali sees herself as musically distinct from Krall, she appreciates their shared West Coast roots.
Krall attended school in Nanaimo, and Biali graduated from the renowned jazz program at North Vancouver's Handsworth Secondary School in 1998. Then both benefited from the vibrant Vancouver jazz scene.
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For Biali, this Saturday's performance will be a welcome homecoming that will give her a chance to showcase the uniqueness of her voice to Vancouver's discriminating audience-and to some familiar critics. "The thought of my piano teacher, whom I haven't seen in seven years, somebody who contributed so significantly to my musical life for over eleven years being in the audience of the Diana Krall concert...it freaks me out a little bit," said Biali.
The Laila Biali Trio, with special guest Phil Dwyer, will open for Diana Krall at the Orpheum Theatre on Saturday June 25. On Sunday, June 26 at noon the Trio will be performing at the CBC Jazz Cafe in the studios at 700 Hamilton Street.
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http://www.thetyee.ca/Entertainment/2005/06/24/KrallingHome/
That's a shame about the Ottawa debacle - she has an angelic voice. I'd much rather see Laila any day over the current opening act arrangement, which I believe is Denzal Sinclaire. Isn't the whole point of opening acts to introduce ppl to new talent that might be of interest to those who came to see the main act? I'd say Laila fits the bill much more so than Denzal...
24-year-old is the jazz composer of the year
Mike Doherty. National Post. Don Mills, Ont.: Jun 23, 2005. pg. AL.3
Look over the list of this year's National Jazz Award recipients, and you'll find quite a few familiar names. Phil Nimmons, Don Thom- pson, Dave Young, Mike Murley ... On the one hand, these are fine musicians deservedly being rewarded for their contributions; on the other, the list, whose nominees were chosen by jazz insiders and winners voted on by the public, brings to mind an old boys' club. Nevertheless, it does contain at least one pleasant surprise: the keyboardist and composer of the year is 24-year-old Laila Biali.
Speaking from her parents' house in North Vancouver, the Toronto- based Biali, who earlier this year released her debut CD, Introducing the Laila Biali Trio, expresses wonder at having won these prestigious awards, as opposed to, say, a secondary prize for "sportsmanship." She's also quick to put her youth in perspective.
"I don't feel young," she says. "It's crazy!" The effusive Biali started playing classical piano by the age of four; by 12, she was playing the Royal Conservatory's ARCT diploma-level repertoire. "I was surrounded by progressively younger prodigies. I had arm problems when I was 15, so those hopes of becoming a concert pianist were dashed. When I entered the jazz world unofficially in my late teens, and more officially in my early twenties, I was like, 'Man, I'm like yesterday's supper. I'm old news.'
"I had the opportunity to get my feet sprinkled -- not even wet - - in late high school. These kids who are getting into it already when they're nine, 10 -- we didn't have that exposure. I see these 'jazz moms,' and they're pushing the kids."
Surely pushing one's young children to learn jazz is a labour of love; there are much more lucrative pursuits one could adopt at an early age. It's difficult to earn a good living playing a style of music that had its commercial apogee over 40 years ago, unless, of course, you're Diana Krall.
Unsurprisingly, Biali, who sings as well as plays the piano, has earned more than her share of comparisons to Canada's ubiquitous jazz siren. She's eager to downplay them all, and with good reason - - Biali's music is much more stylistically wide-ranging than that of her remarkably popular compatriot. And while Biali and her trio are opening for Krall at the Vancouver Jazz Festival on Saturday, she plans to veer as far away from Krall's musical territory as possible -- a decision that wasn't entirely hers.
"We were actually supposed to open for her in Ottawa," she recalls, "but her management said, 'We can't have somebody who's female, playing piano and singing.' And I went, 'Oh well that's strange, 'cause I'm opening for her in Vancouver.' I thought I was going to lose both gigs; it ended up being quite the ordeal." Biali sent Krall's management a disc of mainly instrumental material, and they eventually consented, with the proviso that she not sing for the bulk of her gig. Apparently, the stage is big enough for only one jazz diva.
But Biali doesn't have a bad word to say about Krall, who, she contends, "swings her butt off." She's also keen to impart some of the intimacy and accessibility of Krall's music into her next album. Biali often composes pieces that diverge greatly from the mainstream; in fact, the convoluted melody of one of the pieces she wrote for her now-defunct octet was two minutes long. "I have dealt with the tension between wanting to please the musicians' community and the general public," she says. Lately, she's been worrying about "pushing boundaries a little bit too much and start isolating myself. It will alienate the audience to some degree."
Biali remembers one fateful gig not long ago at the Pilot Lounge, in Toronto's Yorkville, with her trio (Brandi Disterheft on bass and Sly Juhas on drums). "We were playing original stuff, and two people who love me dearly gave me a real talking-to. They walked up and said, 'What are you doing?' One even yelled from the audience at one point, 'Play something that swings!' That's where I would say, 'You know what, it ain't a bad thing to listen to what they're asking for.' I wouldn't say that that's untrue to who we are musically. People want that release."
Despite her relatively late start in jazz, swing rhythms come naturally to Biali, and even her most complex tunes tend to have memorable hooks. After a spate of upcoming gigs, including a set for the Montreal Jazz Festival's GM Prize competition in early July with a new sextet and a tour of China with flautist Ron Korb in September and October, she'll turn her attention to "woodshedding," or intense practicing, and writing music both for her next recording and for the new octet she leads with bassist Mike McClennan, Flight of Whimsy. She's eager to justify fans' having voted for her, and to challenge herself as a musician.
"I have the sense that something big is going to happen," she enthuses. "I don't just mean, like, 'Yeah, I'm going to sell a million records.' I mean it in terms of who I am as a musician and a person, and what I long to share with people. It's really a beautiful thing to realize you are at the beginning of your career, and celebrate the fact that things change."
Posted: 24 Apr 2005, 05:43
Jockey Full of Bourbon! That's great song! And Diana sang it wonderful (in Warsaw)! I hope in Vancouver too 
