Toronto

[scielle]

Krall very much the jazz lady at her Hummingbird love-in
Ashante Infantry. Toronto Star. Toronto, Ont.: Jun 28, 2005. pg. C.06

Canada's Queen of Jazz held a big love-in at the Hummingbird Centre last night.

With the understated announcement of her name, Diana Krall strode onto the stage for the first of two performances at the Hummingbird Centre with a three-piece band, sat at the piano and got down to business.

That meant a captivating display of virtuosity and smoky vocals, delivering hits and standards in an atmosphere graced by reverence and laughter.

Backed by impeccable musicians - Anthony Wilson on guitar, bassist Robert Hurst and Karriem Riggins on drums, each of whom commanded exquisite solos - Krall started off with tracks from her most recent album The Girl in the Other Room.

Two songs in, she swivelled to face the capacity crowd for the first time and greeted them with a sultry "How ya doing?"

Since her 1992 debut, the Nanaimo, B.C. native has sold more than eight million copies of her half-dozen albums.

"It's a big love-in in my world," said the 40-year-old singer/ pianist of the opportunities she's had to work with stellar musicians and ply her craft around the globe.

Her last album marked her progression from simply reinventing jazz standards to writing original compositions, thanks mostly to her marriage to rock legend Elvis Costello.

She credited him while introducing the title track "The Girl in the Other Room" with a cheeky "This song was written by my husband and his wife."

After a yearning version of the ballad, she said wistfully, "His name is Elvis Costello, actually, and he's far away, yeah."

Krall's multi-platinum-selling pop appeal has raised eyebrows in jazz's loftier circles, but she was strictly a jazzlady last night - scatting and, much of the time, seeming lost in her musicianship, hunched over the piano keys, face obscured by long blond tresses, fingers flying and legs keeping time.

Reminding the audience that her performance was part of the downtown jazz festival, she added tunes inspired by Nat King Cole and Dizzy Gillespie, saying of the latter, "Isn't everything inspired by him?"

But mostly the press-shy sonsgstress was having fun mocking her resemblance to Elvis Presley, whining about being on tour for "like 100 years," bantering with a fan with display lights on his jacket and revealing to all that she's just completed a Christmas album as she melded holiday phrasings into a standard.

The jazz festival's workshops have been a popular addition this year with jazz veterans and musicians sharing their insights. Sunday evening saw long-time manager Larry Clothier, who worked with Carmen McRae and Gillespie, talking about the biz. He lamented that a client of his, acclaimed Italian singer Roberta Gambarini who performs at the mainstage tonight, still does not have a record contract.

He spoke of current faves "wildly promoted as great, great jazz singers, they've sold millions and zillions of records in last few years, but I'm pressed to classify them as jazz singers." Yet record labels, he said, won't sign a singer "who is clearly superior."

Hmm. Of course he was too classy to name names. But who? Norah Jones? Our own Diana?

[johnfoyle]

http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2005/06/28/1108399-sun.html

June 28, 2005

Live Review: Diana Krall in Toronto

Krall delivers a cool show on a hot summer night

By JASON MACNEIL -- Toronto Sun


TORONTO - When Diana Krall began touring in support of her latest album The Girl In The Other Room in April 2004, she started with a special mini-concert at Union Station with hubby Elvis Costello nearby.

Last night at the first of two-sold out shows at the Hummingbird Centre, Elvis was nowhere near the building. But Krall and her tight trio of musicians delivered a strong two-hour set.

The singer, who will conclude her tour this week in Ottawa, opened the night with I Love Being Here With You, a quick and punchy jazz number that seemed to work out any foreseeable kinks.

Krall, wearing a black dress, kept herself planted on her piano bench in front of her ebony Steinway for most of the evening, often stomping one foot while tapping the other. Stop This World, the opening track from the new album, slowed things down somewhat as Krall grimaced slightly while pouring herself into the tune.

"Thank you very much, good evening," Krall said before a certain audience member, aka Flyerman, stole some of her thunder.

"What's happening?" she asked him before shutting him up. "This is my show but it's cool."

And cool she and her supporting cast were for most of the night. Boulevard Of Broken Dreams (and no, not the Green Day song) was a tender, dim-the-lights sort of tune as Krall delivered it in a whispery tone.

Just as pleasing was her guitar player Anthony Wilson. Although looking as if he was in pain most of the night with his contorted facial expressions, Wilson had plenty of solo moments during Deed I Do.

Above all though, the night belonged to Krall, particularly on the softer numbers like Little Girl Blue that showed her strong pipes against her softer, sultry vocals. My Shining Hour started a bit slow but kicked into high gear. Throughout it all, Krall manages to play and perform so easily it seems almost mechanical. But it isn't.

Later on in the evening, Krall mentioned how she had completed a Christmas album recently that will be released shortly. She also showed a lighter side as the crowd clapped on hearing the news.

"You haven't heard it yet! It could suck," she said to laughs.

She also kept the Christmas thread during I Was Doing All Right, slipping in a bit of Let It Snow on piano.

The homestretch included Devil May Care which seemed to fall a bit flat as Krall rambled through the lyrics but the smooth Almost Blue brought things back to normal.

After a flubbed attempt at Don't Fence Me In, Krall shone in the encore with the high-tempo Frim Fram Sauce and the mellower, melancholic Departure Bay.

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See
http://www.flyerman.com/about.html

' Flyerman' - some kind of documentary maker, I think.

[scielle]

a T-shirt that read, “I AM a jazz musician.”

- ah, now there's a merch idea!



The Globe Review

Krall returns to her jazz roots
J.D. CONSIDINE
29 June 2005
The Globe and Mail

Context, as they say, is everything.

The last time Diana Krall performed at Toronto's Hummingbird Centre, it was on the heels of her chart-topping 2004 release The Girl in the Other Room. Thanks to the inclusion of a half-dozen originals, composed in collaboration with husband Elvis Costello, The Girl was seen as more of a pop effort than a jazz album, and Krall's performance seemed split between the two worlds.

This time, Krall returned as part of the Toronto Jazz Festival, and there was no mistaking where her focus lay. Gone were the overt pop references and tunes by Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits and Chris Smithers; in their place were bop licks and songs by Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Mose Allison and Bob Dorough.

And while she certainly spent time at the microphone, Krall generally seemed more interested in showing her stuff as a pianist and bandleader — so much so that you'd almost forget she ever made platinum-selling albums.

Of course, that's what listeners expect at a jazz festival, and if any of Krall's fans were disappointed by the shift in emphasis, it wasn't audible in their response. Indeed, not only were the members of the capacity crowd expectedly enthusiastic, they occasionally accorded Krall's playmates more applause than their boss.

Fair enough, because her quartet performed with enough fire and improvisational vigour to have been mistaken for an instrumental group with vocals, rather than a singer's backup band. Although the lineup was largely the same as last year, with new drummer Karriem Riggins joining veterans Anthony Wilson on guitar and Robert Hurst on upright bass, the playing was much more ambitious.

Wilson set the pace early on with a lean, angular solo in the set-opening I Love Being Here with You that evoked the harmonic adventurism of Pat Martino, which Hurst matched with a jaw-dropping flurry of notes. Clearly these guys came to play, and Krall wasn't about to be outdone, delivering a solo whose escalating cascade of notes ended in a two-fisted cluster of chords, pushing against the pulse with Brubeckian daring.

She may have been decked out in her signature little black dress, but Krall's playing was most likely wearing a T-shirt that read, “I AM a jazz musician.”

Not that she entirely turned her back on her pop side. Her version of her husband's Almost Blue was offered without solos (apart from some arco obbligati by Hurst), and the show-closing rendition of Departure Bay was presented singer/songwriter-style, with Krall alone at the piano, locked deep within her memories and emotions.

But The Girl in the Other Room was given a treatment no different than 'Deed I Do, with Wilson taking an oblique, almost dissonant approach to the lush chord structure and Riggins focusing more on witty accents than basic backbeat. Even more impressive was Little Girl Blue, a Janis Joplin oldie Krall announced as having been “inspired by Louis Armstrong,” and which the group rendered as though composed by Allison. No pop pandering there.

Best of all, there was a fearlessness to the performance suggesting that Krall and crew were more than happy to stretch out and take chances. Arlen's My Shining Hour, for instance, was allowed to accelerate into a brisk bop workout that, at times, seemed almost too fast for Wilson to handle. But rather than fuss over articulation, the guitarist simply charged ahead, pushing the harmonic envelope and egging the rhythm section on. It was as if the group were playing a round of “top this,” and damned if each soloist didn't.

In all, it was the sort of showing likely to leave jazz snobs wondering why Krall doesn't play like this all the time. Which is perhaps a bit unfair; after all, if those millions of fans wanted aggressive hard bop, they'd be pushing Abbey Lincoln up the charts. Besides, the fact that Krall can make a pop-friendly album and play uncompromising mainstream jazz is itself worthy of applause.

Even if it only happens at jazz festivals.