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Diana Krall Biography
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.
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."
Diana Krall Links
Diana
Krall Official Website |
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