A big new sound

[scielle]

http://www.projo.com/music/content/arts ... 29128.html


A big new sound
BY Rick Massimp

The first thing you notice about Diana Krall’s latest album, last year’s From This Moment On, is that the big-band sound of the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra is back. Leaving behind the relatively intimate settings of 2004’s The Girl in the Other Room and embracing the full-on big-band sound of her 2005 Christmas album, the cool-sounding Canadian singer and pianist surrounds herself with horns that carry her through another collection of standards.

The second thing you notice is Krall’s voice. Where beforehand it was breathy and emotive, sometimes overly so, on From This Moment On, particularly during a rollicking “Day In, Day Out,” there’s more brass and more confidence.

“It’s vodka,” Krall jokes in a phone interview last month, before explaining that the metaphorical brass was partially due to the presence of so much literal brass: “I was working with big bands, so I had to consciously, especially on a tune like ‘Day In, Day Out,’ to not oversing and keep things very subtle.”

There were also emotional changes in Krall’s life: “I was very happy when I did that record. I had just found out I was pregnant [her twins were born last year], and I was kind of coming into a different time of my life, and maybe that’s why.”

The third thing you notice is that the foray into original songwriting on The Girl in the Other Room is shelved, at least for now.

“Well, they’re somebody’s originals,” Krall says with a laugh. “I had been listening to a lot of Frank Sinatra, Sinatra at the Sands, and I was inspired by that.”

Krall says her method for picking songs to cover is intuitive. “I don’t know — I pick songs I like, play them on the piano and see if I can find something in them that sounds honest, and a story. But it also has to be interesting to me as a jazz pianist, harmonically. . . .

“The only time I analyze it is when I’m talking about it like we are right now. And it’s always puzzling to me because it’s such an intuitive thing. Sometimes I’ll have something I’ll be thinking about for years and then I’ll finally be ready to do it.”

KRALL IS TRAVELING with her children on this tour, and says that the small amount of singing she did while pregnant “was different.” She was very pregnant, she says, when she recorded a piano-vocal duet of “Dream a Little Dream of Me” with Hank Jones for the tribute album We All Love Ella. She recalls telling Marian McPartland, “ ‘Marian, I can’t sing. And she said ‘Oh, you’re fine.’ ”

Asked on the third night of the tour whether she feels fully recovered, she wearily jokes, “I don’t think I’ll ever be all the way back. . . . It’ll take a minute.”

Krall says she has a greatest-hits album coming out in the fall — “makes me feel really old” — and is listening to and picking songs for another record that she hopes to start recording in the fall.

She has about 30 songs picked out — “Everything from off-the-wall stuff to things I’m re-looking at from old notes.” She says that it’ll be an album of covers, largely standards, again.

“I didn’t think there was anything left for me to do, and then I started looking again, and I thought ‘There’s a few more here that I might be ready to do.’ ”

She seems to enjoy the added dimension that a good rendition of a standard can bring, as evidenced by her claim of “Willow Weep for Me” (on From This Moment On) as a song with social relevance. “Songs aren’t just about personal love and loss. Standards — it’s always said ‘Oh, they’re so romantic,’ and I think some of them are bigger than that.”

While she co-wrote songs with her husband, Elvis Costello, for The Girl in the Other Room, and has covered his “Almost Blue,” she doesn’t foresee covering him again any time soon.

“I wish I could sing Elvis Costello songs. . . . But they’re too hard for me! That’s why not a lot of people have done them.”

Krall has said elsewhere that singing standards requires her to get into character and perform them, like an actor in a play, and she says that that’s still part of the process. “I have a whole play in my head. . . . I figure out the whole thing. I guess I’m intensely intense.”

She says she’s been told, “ ‘I just think you sing sad songs better.’ Perhaps. Maybe that suits me.”

[char44256]

Another great interview. I could use one a day.

Char

[Coda]

Char, I agree! Loved the interview.

[Samuel]

Thanks scielle.

[jazzygal karla]

She says she’s been told, “ ‘I just think you sing sad songs better.’ Perhaps. Maybe that suits me.”

Can anybody say "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", "A Blossom Fell" and "That's Why I'm Thru With Love" ??

All three are 'sad songs', and absolute stand-outs on the AFY album.

[imnoangel1975]

Can anybody say "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", "A Blossom Fell" and "That's Why I'm Thru With Love" ??

All three are 'sad songs', and absolute stand-outs on the AFY album.

And two of those three are even greater standouts when performed live! I still haven't heard I'm Thru With Love live yet.

[Samuel]

She says she’s been told, “ ‘I just think you sing sad songs better.’ Perhaps. Maybe that suits me.”

Can anybody say "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", "A Blossom Fell" and "That's Why I'm Thru With Love" ??

All three are 'sad songs', and absolute stand-outs on the AFY album.

Sorry, but what is AFY?

[jazzanddianafan]

We tend to abbreviate here.... AFY is our shorthand for Diana's CD "All For You".... that is the CD dedicated to the Nat King Cole Trio.......

[Samuel]

Oh yes Thank you jazzanddianafan!

Well... now I can comment about the "sad songs". In fact DK tend to accelerate the songs in her live performances. The example that I can say is the songs from "Live in Paris".