Diana Krall is such a fixture in the celebrity sphere that, with all of her high-profile appearances (the gig for President Barack Obama in February, the performance in Michael Mann’s ’30s gangster film Public Enemies, the production work for Barbra Streisand’s next album), it’s easy to forget one rather incredible thing: she’s a bona fide jazz artist who’s topping worldwide charts.
And jazz artists are a peculiar breed. So while the Diana Krall sitting back on a couch in a Toronto hotel room looks like at least a million bucks, greets a stream of journalists with unfailing grace and is willing to chat about, say, the joys of parenthood with Elvis Costello, she seems at her happiest when she's geeking out. Given half the chance, she'll expound on the technical aspects of her new album, Quiet Nights, and on the work of musicians' musicians whose stars don't shine nearly as brightly as those of the A-list company she often keeps.
Krall comes across as, at heart, a jazz fan with talent, taste and a seemingly unlimited budget to realize her dreams. She describes the process by which she devised Quiet Nights: "I go to the studio, which is the size of this room -- a very modest place, and I like it that way. It's got a dusty piano, and on two crap fold-out chairs are sitting two of the greatest legends of music: (arranger/conductor) Claus Ogerman and (producer) Tommy LiPuma. I start playing songs for them like a song-plugger, and then we'll talk and tell stories and laugh, and I'll veer off into some Marx Brothers tune, and (say), 'Oh, why don't we do an album of Harry Ruby songs from the '20s?'"
Eventually, their conversation meandered over to bossa nova, a style she had previously explored on 2001's The Look of Love, which features Ogerman's arrangements. Inspired by a concert tour of Brazil, and by journalist Ruy Castro's book on the bossa phenomenon (which details, as she notes, "the influence of American popular song"), she and the two legends crafted an album featuring standards and classic U.S. pop tunes, all played with a sultry Latin vibe by her quartet, master percussionist Paulinho da Costa and a 60-piece orchestra.
This being a Diana Krall record, the cover features the Nanaimo, B.C.-born Vancouverite in a low-cut dress and with a come-hither look; the album is being promoted as "erotic," so it will doubtless reach listeners whose interest in jazz per se isn't particularly pronounced.
Yet the recording of Quiet Nights, she says, was "very organic ... nothing to do with making an erotic, sensual record; all that stuff comes later when people have to look at it and define it."
She rhapsodizes about aspects of the album that are more meaningful to her: how John Clayton's bass playing resembles pianist Ahmad Jamal's melodic lines rather than "a cliché of what bossa nova is," how pedal tones add complexity to Ogerman's arrangements and how seeing Joao Gilberto live at Carnegie Hall influenced her own vocal performance, which is more understated than it has been on previous records.
She also points out the importance of tempo: "If something's too fast, especially in bossa nova, it changes the emotional feeling." The decidedly unhurried pace of the album's dozen tracks can be interpreted as an invitation to do the horizontal bossa, but on the other hand, it brings out the melancholy inherent in the style.
On her upcoming DVD, Live in Rio, she performs the The Boy from Ipanema (the song's titular character having undergone a sex change since Astrud Gilberto's famous version); at one point, her entire audience softly sings the Portuguese lyrics in response to Krall's singing in English. It's a hushed moment rather than a jubilant one, and seems to portray a sea of strangers united in longing.
"It is longing," says Krall of her own feeling while playing the song. "Longing for your youth ---- you can interpret that so many ways, as an older woman. I'm not that older, but . . . I always find melancholy in everything I do."
Not that Krall wishes to dwell on this feeling --- she describes herself as "inspired" by her two-year-old twins, Dexter and Frank, who are currently taking music classes (given their pedigree, they've likely already demoed their first No. 1 hit using recorders and Lummi sticks). Making Quiet Nights, she says, was "fun and joyful," and even working with the famously opinionated Barbra Streisand (whose new album is due later this year) was "a big love-in."
"We were two very headstrong artists who didn't always agree, but after the disagreement, we'd laugh and play cards," Krall says. "There is that challenge -- you find a middle ground that works for both of you."
Something like this can be said of Krall's career: she finds a middle ground between high gloss (her stylized photo shoots and videos, the "polished" sound delivered by longtime engineer Al Schmitt) and spontaneity (her desire to "keep the integrity of the magic of the first take"). Clearly her approach is working: Quiet Nights sits at No. 1 on the Amazon and HMV charts.
This success, she says, strikes her as "very strange -- to see that (chart placement), and then U2, and Keith Urban, and Kelly Clarkson... I'm very thankful. It's always hard for me to talk about a record, because all these things are said about it, and you've got to do all these bios and publicity, and ultimately I just make a record that I really love, that I'm inspired to do."
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