Diana Krall
DIANA KRALL GIVES US 'THE LOOK OF LOVE'
When Diana Krall's The Look of Love debuted on the Billboard Top Ten, it was officially time to declare this gifted jazz vocalist and pianist a bona fide pop star as well. A low-key masterpiece featuring the lush arrangements of Claus Ogerman, the album is yet another dazzling feather in Krall's cap. The golden girl of jazz singing spoke to Barnes&Noble.com's Ted Panken about her latest hit.
Barnes & Noble.com: Talk about the nature of the collaboration with Claus Ogerman.
Diana Krall: I wanted to work with Claus my whole life. I chose to do ballads and bossa novas, which I felt was best suited for Claus's kind of writing. I was really honored to do that. Well, I've been listening to his work since I was 17 years old. His work with Bill Evans, his work with Frank Sinatra, his work with Jobim and Joao Gilberto greatly inspired "I've Got You Under My Skin" and "Let's Face the Music and Dance" on When I Look in Your Eyes. When I met Claus we started talking about movies and the cinema, and we hit it off immediately, because we sort of describe things very visually and cinematically. When we were in the process of working on these things, I came in one morning having just watched The Bandwagon with Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire, and I was thinking bout "Dancing in the Dark," and he goes, "Hmm, let me think about this," and he came in the next day, and all of a sudden he's got, like, Ravel at the end! Which is his own thing. But it's very interesting to hear this, and how you take it from this and make it into that. I didn't want to fade that out. I wanted to keep that. I mean, it's amazing to me to hear the end of "Love Letters," where I did a few bars of the intro solo piano, and he said, "We'll keep that," or, "Sort of listening to what you did, I wrote this." And what he wrote was so utterly beautiful, I think it's my favorite thing on the record.
B&N.com: So it was a process of collaboration.
DK: Yes, we were working completely together. Except there's a few things.... There did come a point where I said, " 'Besame Mucho,' 'I Remember You,' and 'S'Wonderful,' you got it. I'll come in and sing it." I think it's really important.... There was a complete trust in each other, in what we did. I've always been very-very-very familiar with his work already, so I knew what I was doing.
B&N.com: Well, most experienced arrangers, especially for singers, certainly have a sense of the timbre and range and idiosyncracies of the person's voice. Do you have any speculations on the way he took into account the particularities of your voice and phrasing?
DK: I have no clue. I don't think we even thought about that. I just think that we sat and hung around and talked about everything from opera to great comedians, and played the piano together, and said, "Well, what about this?" -- and with respect to Nelson Riddle, we were working on "I Get Along Without You Very Well," and I remember a very wonderful quote where he goes, "Ah, we must sock it to Nelson." If we're going to do this, we've got to do it. We didn't talk that much. He said we talked a lot, but I don't think we talked very much.
B&N.com: As you said straight-up, the album has very much a Brazilian ambiance. Can you address the appeal of Brazilian music to you and whether it's a stylistic influence on your singing style.
DK: Totally. I don't know whether you know that the last couple of days were very big days regarding this record. Brazil has put "Dancing in the Dark" in one of their soap operas! The record I think will go gold. Brazil has been a very important place for me to perform the music I've performed with Joao Bosco, and in particular Claus's work with Joao Gilberto and Jobim. If you get Amoroso, you will hear what I'm talking about. That is a masterpiece of a record. Those are influences I've had for a long time.
B&N.com: How about other Brazilian singers?
DK: Well, Djavan, Rosa Passos, Joao Bosco, whom I've worked with, of course Jobim. For me Joao Gilberto and Jobim. If you asked me tomorrow, I'd say something different! I have this one record with Joao Gilberto, Live in Montreux, which is something that I keep with me always. It doesn't leave.
B&N.com: In the way that the industry categorizes artists and records, you're a jazz singer. First of all, do you see jazz singing as different from those other categories in a fundamental way, and if so, what would be the nature of the difference?
DK: Whether or not I'm a jazz singer is something that I don't really think about. It's interesting, the position that I'm in, because people say "You're performing the music of Joni Mitchell..." Jazz, as Sonny Rollins says, is a way of doing things. So you have Dianne Reeves, who is a true jazz singer in the sense that she scat-sings and she is... I mean, she's coming up from tradition, but if you've seen her live, she's performing everything from Peter Gabriel to Ellington. Cassandra Wilson is another example of that. It's the way she interprets. She could sing "Happy Birthday" and it would sound like.... That's why she did the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville." She could take it and make it into that. She's beyond category. I think she's the greatest. She and Diane are my two favorite jazz singers. I do not do very well with trying to be categorized. Like, now they're saying, "Well, she's gone pop" and "This is too pop." It's a very widely used word, "jazz," now. [laughs] I think that the root of what I do is Duke Ellington and Fats Waller and Bill Evans and Teddy Wilson and Lester Young and Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, and also all the other things I listened to, like Jean Goldkette and Bix Beiderbecke and all these things I grew up listening to, and Jack Benny and Grouch Marx and Harry Ruby -- all these different elements that roll into this way of interpreting a lyric. So there's storytelling.
B&N.com: To what extent would improvising be possible on an album where there's so much lush sound around you?
DK: The jazz piano side is where I choose to do my improvising. That was the biggest challenge on this record, not putting in everything that I know, letting the music be what it is, and making an artistic decision to have the challenge of using subtleties, playing the right notes. Improvising a beautiful melody, for instance, on "Love Letters," something that's singable. That's something that guitarist Russell Malone and I had a complete handle on. If I can sing Russell's solo on "You Call It Madness," which I can, that's more memorable to me than singing [sings first two bars of Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop"] in the ballad, rather than having to do a lot of stuff. There's time to play a lot of stuff and there's time to do that. And I found that on these bossa novas it was very challenging to find the right notes and where to place them.
B&N.com: The simplicity of it.
DK: Therein lies the challenge! Exactly. And something that sounds so simple, it's been always my goal to have it sound simple. It was very challenging for me to play a few notes at the end of "S'Wonderful." It was very challenging for me to figure out what to do in there. What am I going to do in there? Sometimes you have to have the guts to say nothing.
B&N.com: What was it like working with Bruce Weber on the cover art?
DK: Great. Bruce is unique to any other photographer I've worked with. Every shot he's going for has a specific scene. For a pool sort of shot, he's got Hawaiian music. Everything is very much about storytelling, and he's taught me about making pictures. His affection for Chet Baker. His affection for the art form. His intensity. His ability to see the person and not make it into a fashion shoot that he wants to do. His ability to light and to know how to create a mood. That's what we do. So instead of saying, "Work with me, baby," you don't even have to do anything, because you walk in, and there's all of a sudden Edith Piaf, and you put on your trench coat, and all of a sudden, there you go. You're working! You're a character in a scene. That's why the pictures were so fun to make. I ride horses, and there was a horse there, and he had Patsy Cline playing. Everything was just a different scene, and he created a different stage, if you will, for that.
B&N.com: Can you talk about the albums that are in your listening rotation these days?
DK: I've got Jobim, Wave, which is amazing. I've got Joao Gilberto. I have Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny, Beyond the Missouri Skies. I have Joni Mitchell, Blue. I have Elton John, Blue Moves. I have Fred Astaire Sings. I have The Voice of Wales: Music for Welsh Male Voice Choir. . I have Tom Waits, Heart of Saturday Night. I have this Chinese music that's amazing that they gave me when I was in Singapore. I have Sergio Mendes. I have South Park -- you don't want to see that! I have the soundtrack to Shrek. And I have another Joao. I've got tons of CDs with me.
B&N.com: The Billie Holiday Columbia box is out.
DK: Right. I can't wait to see that. Jimmy Rowles [Krall's mentor] adored her. And I think as far as telling a story and experiencing it...I don't know what to say about Billie Holiday. She doesn't scat-sing, but she's the best example of someone who is completely original and...if you listen to "For Heaven's Sake" on Lady in Satin, it says it all.
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