http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413 ... 07,00.html
Krall tilts toward jazz at Davies
By Jim Harrington
CONTRIBUTOR
DIANA KRALL long has been the jazz world's version of tennis-playing hottie Anna Kournikova.
Her potent combination of good looks and big talent makes Krall a very marketable commodity and a way to introduce non-jazz fans to the genre.
And, at least until recently, the 39-year-old Canadian vocalist-pianist has seemed more than willing to play the part of jazz beauty queen.
Doubters need only take a look inside her 2001 CD "The Look of Love." The booklet doesn't show Krall playing piano or singing. But it does feature plenty of pictures of her long legs and sexy "come hither" looks. There's even a swimsuit shot.
But her beauty is just part of the equation.
Tuesday night during a sold-out show at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, Krall proved once again that she's even better at playing than she is at posing.
Despite the crossover success she's received with her latest CD, "The Girl in the Other Room," Krall seemed determined to remind both new and old fans to still file her under jazz.
Krall, who also performed Wednesday at the Historic Mountain Winery in Saratoga, opened her San Francisco show in challenging fashion with a yet-untitled instrumental track that was a zigzagging tribute to the great Art Blakey. The song moved like a pinball, and Krall nearly tilted the musical machine as the tempo and mood changed countless times.
With that firm declaration, Krall had properly warned fans of Norah Jones-style jazz that they might be in the wrong building. And some definitely agreed. Dozens of listeners made an early exit, some leaving well before the halfway point of the two-hour show.
That's not to say that Krall hasn't softened her approach a bit to help reach a wider market. Her performance often felt closer to Joni Mitchell than, say, Marian McPartland. She's definitely embraced a singer-songwriter vibe for many songs.
The 19-selection show focused strongly on the gold-certified "The Girl in the Other Room," the singer's best work to date. She tested out much of this new material last year at Yoshi's at Jack London Square. This performance was far superior to what she presented the Yoshi's crowds, which included hubby Elvis Costello and pal Tom Waits on opening night.
Krall's breathy version of Waits' "Temptation," which is also featured on "The Girl," was one of the true highlights of the Davies concert. The singer was artfully restrained as she gently fueled the words with a near-smoldering sense of longing that was perfect for the sparse Western-tinged musical backdrop.
The one song noticeably missing from the show was her husband's "Almost Blue." That forlorn track is the best thing on "The Girl" and it would have certainly translated well in concert.
The singer was backed by a terrific band that featured guitarist Anthony Wilson, bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Peter Erskine. These guys are all bandleaders in their own worlds and it was truly amazing to see them take the stage together. But Krall is such a major player that she can get basically whomever she wants.
Although each of the three accompanying musicians was given plenty of room to shine, Krall was clearly the brightest talent on the stage.
She made the most of her time, using the evening to fully illustrate her vast versatility. She roughed up Joni Mitchell's "Black Crow" and melted through Mose Allison's "Stop This World." She played it straight with the classic "S'Wonderful" and pranced like Fred Astaire through Irving Berlin's "Let's Face the Music and Dance.
She also made fans long for the vocalist to record a strictly blues record. Her version of "Love Me Like a Man," a song written by Chris Smither and adapted by Bonnie Raitt, was deliriously fun as Krall crooned like Billie Holiday and played like Fats Domino.
The concert ended with a three-song solo encore highlighted by the tender Krall-Costello composition "Departure Boy.
Krall had certainly tipped her longstanding equation in favor of talent by the time she wrapped up the last song. The standing ovation that followed had nothing to do with her looks.
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Diana Krall scattered her show with American songbook jewels. (Bob Larson/Contra Costa Times)
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/9213945.htm
Posted on Thu, Jul. 22, 2004
With no jazz in sight, Krall still mesmerizes
By Andrew Gilbert
TIMES CORRESPONDENT
DEEP INTO Diana Krall's two-hour performance at Davies Symphony Hall on Tuesday night, some dolt in the balcony bellowed out "Sing 'Peel Me a Grape,' Diana!"
Up until then, the pianist/singer had focused mostly on music from her new Verve CD "The Girl In the Other Room," an album that departs considerably from her previous repertoire of standards, Nat King Cole numbers and sassy Dave Frishberg ditties like "Grape."
In response to the suggestion, Krall offered a sarcastic, slow, get-this-through-your-thick-head solo instrumental rendition of Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In," noting later in the show that shouted requests weren't surprising. "You pay ridiculous tickets prices, and you think you can hear what you want to hear," she said.
While some of her longtime fans are clearly distraught by the move, Krall has escaped from the jazz reservation, both through her marriage to Elvis Costello last year and by gratifying her own musical curiosity. She built her phenomenally successful career on crooning beloved tunes with her bluesy, emotionally restrained (or to her critics, constrained) delivery, and has now ventured into confessional singer/songwriter territory, with some rewarding side trips into attitude-laden hipsterdom.
With a new book made up largely of her original tunes, many co-written with Costello, and songs by Mose Allison, Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits, Krall has expanded her emotional range to suit her material, and her voice is more expressive than ever.
Still, her Davies performance Tuesday was geared to please a wider range of her fans than last year's shows at Yoshi's, when she barely played a jazz tune. Clearly, Krall hasn't forsaken swing. Backed by Anthony Wilson on guitar, Robert Hurst on standup bass and Peter Erskine on drums -- in other words, the best band money can buy -- she often turned around on the piano bench to better watch one of her sidemen take a deft solo.
Scattering American Songbook jewels throughout the concert, Krall followed her hard bop instrumental opener with an anguished rendition of "All or Nothing at All." She brought terpsichorean grace to her brisk foxtrot through Irving Berlin's "Let's Face the Music and Dance," but she was at her idiosyncratic best on a whiskey-tinged version of the Gershwins' "But Not For Me," which she sang with such late-night-saloon melancholy you could almost hear the shot glasses clinking in the background.
Of her original material, by far her best piece is the new album's title track, a forlorn, lovely song that she rendered with Costelloesque incisiveness. Fueled by Erskine's masterly brush work, Krall raced through Bob Dorough's "Devil May Care" at breakneck speed, and she seemed to identify with Mitchell's weary "Black Crow."
It was only at the end of the show, with her full-throated belting on the Bonnie Raitt-associated tune "Love Me Like a Man" that Krall gave her blues sensibility free rein.
The rootsy sextet Ollabelle opened the show with a half-hour set that was badly compromised by a fuzzy sound mix. Playing spirituals, delta blues and old time gospel, with a particular affection for the haunted sacred blues of Blind Willie Johnson, the band has an interesting concept and knows all about the joys of four-part harmony. But their arrangements, which include electric bass, electric piano and organ, too often drained the songs of their life and death drama. When you sing about Satan, you better be scared, scary or both. Ollabelle was too darn cheerful.
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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... type=music
Krall sleepwalks through gloomy set
Joe Brown, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Sulky, sloppy, sarcastic and strangely out of it, Diana Krall's Tuesday night performance at Davies Symphony Hall was so odd it was often comic. At times it seemed as if it must be a put-on, at others as if Krall was out to win the title of the Courtney Love of jazz.
Perhaps marriage doesn't agree with her (Krall married rock star Elvis Costello in December). Or maybe the platinum-selling pianist and singer is just tired of touring. Whatever the cause (her attitude throughout the show was a distinct "whatever"), Krall followed a determinedly downbeat set list, with most of the lyrics focusing on failed love or dreary road weariness.
It was like an expensive, bizarre bait and switch: Krall, who has played on her leggy blond glamour in the past, even looked markedly different, almost confrontationally drab. Draped like furniture in an aqua poncho over jeans and heels, curving like a kidney bean into the keys, she rarely smiled, hiding her face behind her long Linda McCartney-circa-'74-style shag.
She was stalwartly supported throughout by a chops-laden trio of pros: Anthony Wilson on eloquent hollow-body electric guitar; Robert Hurst on nimble, supple standup bass; and the precise Peter Erskine on drums. They warmed up with a skittering instrumental workout inspired by Art Blakey, which Krall called "I Don't Know" -- she hasn't gotten around to naming it.
Krall built her career on well-chosen standards, but Costello reportedly has encouraged Krall's songwriting, and the show sported a handful of Costello- Krall originals, patterned rather obviously after Joni Mitchell, who Krall nodded to with a respectful cover of "Black Crow" complete with pecking percussion on the piano strings.
From her new album "The Girl in the Other Room," Krall played the noirish title track, the rambling and sophomoric "Abandoned Masquerade," and "I'm Coming Through," which took more than a sip of Jobim's "Waters of March." The very last song of the evening was also its high point, Krall's own "Departure Bay," an extended, austere meditation on her home in British Columbia -- she might join the ranks of confessional singer-songwriters after all.
Her voice -- sandpapered silk, Shirley Horn-slow, a kind of distaff Chet Baker -- was always right there, effortlessly straddling the divide between jazz and classic pop on numbers like a bossa-beat "Let's Face the Music and Dance." And though her energetic piano technique veered between playful and haphazard, Krall proved herself an unpredictable player, with nods to Bill Evans and Vince Guaraldi, dramatizing passages with her trademark explosive chord clusters. She tackled Tom Waits' "Temptation," which dwindled weirdly into a jammy, almost inaudible close, as if she was going to drift into the Dead's "Dark Star."
But the endless bummer of this erratic evening eventually tried the patience of an audience that had come to adore. "Give me a break, baby!" one fellow shouted from an upper tier after Krall couldn't remember who wrote "I'll String Along With You," which ended up on the soundtrack to "The Cooler. " In answer, Krall sarcastically noodled a lengthy solo piano version of "Don't Fence Me In," while her band stood around waiting through her indulgence. (Later, she would start, and then flub, a song she's played many times before, ironically, Mose Allison's "Your Mind Is On Vacation.")
Krall seemed intent on being shed of her easy-listening label and smooth- jazz fans. And the crowd (with a top ticket price of $95) had thinned visibly by the middle of the 90-minute set.
The entertainer almost perversely denied the crowd what they wanted. "Peel Me a Grape!" one fan finally begged from the balcony toward the end of the evening. "No. ... I can't," Krall sighed, refusing to play the hit, then tried to joke her way out of it. "You pay these prices, and you think you can hear whatever you want."
After the unnecessarily obligatory standing ovation (politeness is good, San Francisco, but show some discernment!), Krall came out alone and encored with rote, spartan versions of " 'S Wonderful" and "Frim Fram Sauce," standards she could clearly do in her sleep, which she very nearly did.
E-mail Joe Brown at
jbrown@sfchronicle.com.
Yowza!
I did the same thing-got in good with the security guard outside Radio City Music Hall on the last night of DK's tour with Tony Bennett and got to meet her outside the stage door as she was emerging and got the program signed. So I know your excitement. You must be feeling really pumped up. And you got to meet Michelle too who is really a terrific person. What a bonus!
I'm sitting here laughing my head off!! You folks don't know, but Kel writes 
Best, Michelle
