|
 The
depth of feeling which lies behind Diana Krall's highly successful Verve
releases has always been known to her most appreciative listeners.
However, with her latest album, The Girl In The Other Room, Krall not
only illustrates her understanding of the breadth of possibilities in
the jazz idiom but also reveals her talent as a songwriter.
Indeed, the title song of the record is a Krall original. While some may
be attracted to the lyrical portrait of a mysterious woman distracted by
love (and note in passing that the words were co-written with Elvis
Costello), the ear is drawn to the elegant and effortlessly swinging
accompaniment of Krall's piano and that of her long-time partners in
rhythm: Jeff Hamilton on drums and bassist, John Clayton.
Diana Krall Links
For much of the
album, the musical support comes from drummer Peter Erskine and bassist
Christian McBride. The inventive and sympathetic guitar playing of
Anthony Wilson is heard throughout a record that which also features
drummer Terri Lynne Carrington and Neil Larson sitting in on Hammond B-3
for one cut.
The album is the first co-produced by Krall and her long-time producer
Tommy LiPuma. Recorded at Capitol Studios, Hollywood and Avatar
Recording, New York City, the sessions were engineered throughout 2003
by another long-term cohort, Al Schmitt.
Listeners used to Krall's intimate and seductive interpretations of
standard ballads may be surprised at first by her present choice of
composers. Take a listen to her take on Mose Allison's timely blues,
"Stop This World" or the driving and joyfully carnal "Love Me Like a
Man" (with its final chorus salute to Count Basie) and you will hear a
singer, bandleader and piano player in her top form.
Krall's sensual approach to Tom Waits' "Temptation," with its
extraordinary introduction by Christian McBride, is balanced by Krall's
own exquisite preface to a most tender rendition of Elvis Costello's
"Almost Blue." A beautifully reflective version of a relatively obscure
standard, "I'm Pulling Through," recalls the style of her teacher, Jimmy
Rowles.
The spirit of Rowles and an apprenticeship of the jazz club experiences
is inspiration for one of Krall’s new compositions, "I've Changed My
Address," only as Krall reflects, revisiting some of these venues can be
a shock: "Everything looks pretty much the same but the place is now a
sports bar and there is pool table where there used to be a piano."
While so much of the
music is new, the album itself recalls a vinyl disc of two sides. The
bold and flowing solos from Krall and guitarist Anthony Wilson on Joni
Mitchell's song of travel, "Black Crow," announce a series of original
songs that speak of family and of love, but also of enduring the
grievous loss of a parent. As Krall explained recently: "I went through
a series of deep personal losses and changes. So...this is what I did
instead of shutting the door and saying ‘I can't deal with it’".
So it is that the gospel changes of the hopeful "Narrow Daylight" give
away to the sophisticated blues of "Abandoned Masquerade." It is this
song that most clearly expresses the need (for now at least) for the
singer to step out from behind the beautiful romantic illusions found in
so many songs of the past. Once again, the music leaves the listener in
no doubt that they are hearing the work of a jazz composer.
The gently defiant tone of "I'm Coming Through" marks another subtle
shift of musical scene with wonderful playing from Anthony Wilson. The
content of these last songs is undoubtedly the most specifically
personal material yet recorded by Diana Krall.
The album closes with perhaps the most deeply felt of the self-composed
titles. "Departure Bay" contains vivid and touching images of her
hometown of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island but also a wrenching description
of her family's first Christmas without her mother and a final verse
that welcomes new love and hope for the future.
Musically composed by Krall alone, these songs mark a lyrical
collaboration with her new husband, Elvis Costello. Explaining how they
worked, Krall said: "I wrote the music and then Elvis and I talked about
what we wanted to say. I told him stories and wrote pages and pages of
reminiscences, descriptions and images, and he put them into tighter
lyrical form. For "Departure Bay," I wrote down a list of things that I
love about home, things I realized were different, even exotic, now that
I've been away".
Songs often suggest and recall moments in our own lives and listeners
must surely be aware that Diana Krall's previous recordings contained
many personal but private meanings for the artist. On The Girl In The
Other Room, what was once partly hidden has been brought beautifully
into view.
Born in Nanaimo,
British Columbia (not far from Vancouver), Diana Krall grew up in the
western part of Canada and began studying the piano when she was four
years old. By the time she was 15, she was playing jazz in a local
restaurant/bar. One person who encouraged her interest in music was her
father, a stride pianist with a vast knowledge of such Twenties and
Thirties keyboard masters as Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, and Earl
Hines. "I think Dad had every recording Fats Waller ever made," she
says, "and I tried to learn as many as I could."
Krall was still a teenager when she was awarded a scholarship to the
prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. After two years in
Boston, she moved to Los Angeles, where she met her first jazz
heavyweights, including John Clayton, pianist/singer Jimmy Rowles, and
Ray Brown, the legendary bassist who served as her musical mentor (and
played on Only Trust Your Heart). Krall had lived in Los Angeles for
three years when she moved to Toronto, and it was a Canadian label that
gave her a chance to record for the first time. In 1993, the
Montreal-based Justin Time Records released her debut album, Stepping
Out. In 1994, she signed with GRP and recorded Only Trust Your Heart,
which featured Brown on bass and Stanley Turrentine on tenor saxophone
and marked the beginning of her association with Tommy LiPuma (who has
worked with everyone from Barbra Streisand to George Benson).
Since then, LiPuma has produced all of Krall's subsequent albums for GRP,
Impulse!, and Verve, including All for You: A Dedication to the Nat
"King" Cole Trio (1995), Love Scenes (1997), When I Look In Your Eyes
(1998), The Look Of Love (2001), and Live in Paris (2003). "That was the
first time I had produced that many albums in a row for any artist," he
says. "Diana and I have such a good chemistry between us--it makes it
easy. When one of us makes a suggestion, the other listens in earnest.
We have tremendous respect for one another."
Krall grew increasingly popular throughout the Nineties. Only Trust Your
Heart, All For You, and Love Scenes all sold well, but the album that
put her over the top commercially was When I Look in Your Eyes. In
addition to spending 52 weeks in the #1 position on Billboard's jazz
chart, When I Look In Your Eyes won GRAMMYs in two categories, Best Jazz
Vocal Performance and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, and received
a GRAMMY nomination in the Album Of The Year category-putting Krall in
competition with Santana, the Backstreet Boys, the Dixie Chicks, and
TLC.
Needless to say, it
isn't every day that an acoustic-oriented jazz improviser finds herself
competing with major rock, country, urban, and teen-pop stars for a
GRAMMY award. Nor is it every day that a jazz improviser becomes a major
attraction at the Lilith Fair festival, founded by singer/songwriter
Sarah McLachlan to spotlight female pop-rock and pop artists. But in
1998, Krall had no problem winning over a young, predominantly female
audience more likely to be into Sheryl Crow or Alanis Morissette than
Abbey Lincoln or Chris Connor.
When I Look in Your Eyes eventually went platinum in the United States
(where it sold over one million units), double platinum in Canada,
platinum in Portugal, and gold in France. It was a hard act to follow,
but Krall's next album, The Look Of Love, would also be an impressive
seller. Released in September 2001, it entered the Billboard 200 at #9
and sold 95,000 copies in the U.S. alone in its first week.
"The thing about Diana is her musicianship," Al Schmitt said in an
interview with the Los Angeles Times. "More than most singers, she knows
what's right for her, and she knows how to make it happen musically."
|
