Q & A
Krall's space
Diana Krall dishes on Elvis Costello, bossa nova and her new album, Quiet Nights
Last Updated: Wednesday, April 8, 2009 | 10:47 AM ET
By Sarah Liss, CBC News
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Sarah Liss
Biography

Sarah Liss is the web producer for CBC Radio 2. A former music editor at Toronto alternative weekly NOW, Sarah's writing has appeared in FLARE, Strut, Toronto Life, Fashion-18 and AOL Canada. She is a music columnist at Toronto's Eye Weekly.
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.
Quiet Nights is in stores now.
Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.
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(Universal Music Canada)
Krall, left, performs with bassist John Clayton during a concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. (Dominic Favre/Reuters)

