Canadian jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall has released her 12th album, Quiet Nights. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) A decade ago, when Canadian singer-pianist Diana Krall released her breakthrough album, Love Scenes (1997), some purists were taken aback by her unapologetically sexy presentation. Krall’s purring entreaties to “peel me a grape” while she lounged at her piano, barefoot and leonine, offered a rather steamy spin on classics from the Great American Songbook. The sultry approach was especially surprising coming from an artist who wasn’t merely a torch singer, but an accomplished instrumentalist.
Krall has always had effortless piano technique, but until recently, there was an air of emotional detachment in her vocals. That shifted with The Girl in the Other Room (2004), her first — and only, to date — collaboration with husband Elvis Costello.
It seems that marriage and motherhood have brought out a warmth and richness in Krall the performer. (She and Costello have twin two-year-old sons, Dexter and Frank.) Where she used to bring a breezy coquettishness to romantic numbers, Krall now sings love songs with a confident passion.
She has said that her latest album, Quiet Nights, is a love letter of sorts to Costello. It’s a slow-burning collection of tunes that sway with gentle bossa nova rhythms, whether they’re iconic Brazilian numbers (like the title track, by Antonio Carlos Jobim) or reinterpretations of retro hits (like Bacharach and David’s Walk On By). During a recent stopover in Toronto, Krall chatted with CBCNews.ca about Brazilian culture, living legends and which of her performances is a hit with her kids.
Q: You’ve mentioned that the inspiration for the bossa nova sound on Quiet Nights came from the kids you encountered while performing in Brazil. Can you talk a bit more about that?
A: It wasn’t so much that I saw kids singing bossa songs. It was that I was interviewed by kids who knew all of Jobim’s music. I always relate it to the Maritimes, where [the music stretches] across generations. Of course, Brazil is a culture rich in many things, not just palm trees and bossa nova. But their music is something that’s very deep in their culture. Kids know their history of Jobim. It’s the Tropicalia movement, it’s all sorts of forward-moving things with younger artists, but there is the history of bossa nova there.
I’ve been singing bossa nova for years and taking standards like I’ve Got You Under My Skin and doing — instead of the normal Frank Sinatra-style, I’ve-got you-under-my-skin feel — turning them into bossa nova. It changes the emotional direction of the piece. So I really enjoy finding something like Where Or When and changing it into a bossa nova — with a different tempo, it becomes a different story.
(Universal Music Canada) Q: Claus Ogerman, the string arranger you used on this album, worked on Joao Gilberto’s iconic Amoroso album and Frank Sinatra’s bossa collaboration with Jobim. Was it daunting to work with someone who’d helped shape classics in the genre?
A: That was the point. That’s why we did it. That’s what I wanted to do. There are very few legends to work with in this lifetime, this short lifetime we have. And, you know, there’s a lot of history in the music Claus has done. If I can work with people who’ve created the music I love so much, then I’m gonna ask them to work with me. Like Ray Brown or Tommy LiPuma. I’m working with people who are younger than me, in their early 30s, to people who are in their 80s right now. And that brings a really good mix to what I’m doing, because you have that complete authentic spirit. They were in it when it was being created, so hopefully they’ll bring some of that feel to my project. Not that there aren’t great arrangers right now, but I can give that to somebody else someday.
Q: Did Claus tell you any stories about the Gilberto sessions?
A: Thousands! Hundreds! That’s part of the whole process, the stories. It goes on into the night, during the dinner hour, after recording. You tell stories and you talk about everything and you carry that over into recording the next day so that it’s all this big, wonderful, rolling sea.
Q: Speaking of stories, there’s a rumour you’re planning to work with Elvis Costello on a children’s album.
A: Well, it was more that people are always asking, “So, will you ever work with Elvis?” And I said that if I was going to work with him — I don’t have any plans, but if I were to work with him, I think it would be really fun to do something like a kids’ album. And now I’m getting all these questions like, “I hear you’re doing a children’s album with Elvis!” No! But if I was going to do something with him, I think that would be fun.
Q: Do you guys sing a lot of songs to your kids? Have they demonstrated a preference for Daddy’s music over Mommy’s, or vice versa?
A: They like everything. They like Frosty the Snowman, this theme from The Mickey Mouse Club called Hot Dog. They like Take That Jive, Jack, which they sing. They like Crazy Frog, which goes “bing, bing, bing-ba-bing bing bing” .… There’s this thing called the Hamster Dance, which they like. They do their own dance to it — let’s get crazy! They also like Yes We Have No Bananas. That’s a pretty good one, not too big a hit. I’ll turn on the radio and start singing a song and they just pick it up. It’s kinda scary.
The other day, Dexter was singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Frank’s singing — what was he singing? It was suppertime, and they were both singing two different songs at the same time. Itsy Bitsy Spider or something. Oh, and “Dem bones, dem bones,” they love that. We have about 10 different versions of Dem Bones, and they’ll be like, “Fast Dem Bones! Fast Dem Bones!” because we’ve got this sort of Mötörhead version. They like that. Whatever gets your motor going. They like [Costello’s] Pump It Up, too. But some days they don’t like it. Some days it’s, “No Pump It Up!”
Krall, left, performs with bassist John Clayton during a concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. (Dominic Favre/Reuters) Q: Are they aware that their parents are stars? Have they seen either of you perform?
A: I think they do. They watched me yesterday on TV. Regis and Kelly. And they love the Sesame Street. It’s all about Sesame Street. “Mommy on Sesame Street!” They sit on Daddy’s lap and watch it on the computer. Everybody's Song, they love that.
Q: You’ve also been producing Barbra Streisand’s new album. What’s that like?
A: It’s called all power to the real producers in this world, because I’m an artist, and there are people like Tommy LiPuma and Phil Ramone — anybody who’s producing and has a vision and hears things and knows how to work with an artist. It’s a very, very, very big job. Yeah. And artist-to-artist is a little more … emotional.
Q: I imagine you wouldn’t want to have a battle of the egos — A: What ego? [Smiles.] I don’t have an ego! [Laughs.]
Q: Right. Of course not. It was more like American Gladiators.
A: Yeah, it’s MTV wrestling. No! It’s not that! It’s not gladiators! It’s two artists trying to find a common ground that works for both of them. I’m playing the music and conceptualizing what I hear, and I have to make sure that she likes my ideas. And that she doesn’t feel like she’s being completely taken out of her comfort zone and placed in something that’s ridiculous.
I try to do what I do with my records, which is to record everything live, create that magic, and then tweak and fix later. I want to keep things as untouched as possible, to get the best live performance and keep it sounding that way. And she did great. Or, I mean, of course she did great, but it was a different. She hadn’t done that for a long time. So it was really incredible for me to watch her working with John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton, us all being in the room and discussing what the feel was. It was very much a collective rather than, you know, the glass and the musicians on one side and the artist on the other side.
So yeah, it was really, really cool. One thing that I know I felt very good about is that she and I have a tremendous honesty between each other, and we kept everything very real, very up front. There was no guessing what the other one was thinking. It gets very familial. So when you leave the studio, everyone has to feel good. Anything that has to get talked out gets talked out. I’m that kind of person anyway, so I just was myself.
Quiet Nights is in stores now.
Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.
