sábado, 2 de marzo de 2013

Photo: Diana Krall performs at the MTS Centre

Diana Krall performs at the MTS Centre Saturday.

TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS



Photo: Diana Krall performs at the Jubilee Auditorium



Canadian jazz singer/pianist Diana Krall performs at the Jubilee Auditorium on Tuesday.
February 12, 2013
Photograph by: Greg Southam, Edmonton Journal
 

Photo: DIANA KRALL nerveuse de chanter dans sa ville natale


Diana Krall

Photo: La Presse Canadienne

*****

Fuente, article: www.lapresse.ca

Article: Montréal en lumière 2013: Diana Krall at Place des Arts, Feb. 26, 2013

February 26, 2013



Diana Krall (with bassist Dennis Crouch in background) performs at Place des Arts, Feb. 26, 2013
(photo by Victor Diaz Lamich, courtesy of Montréal en lumière)


Montréal en lumière 2013: Diana Krall at Place des Arts,
Feb. 26, 2013

By the time Diana Krall completed her two-hour show at Place des Arts on Tuesday night, her voice was shot.

“Merci, Montréal – je suis fini,” the jazz superstar from Nanaimo, B.C. croaked in improvised French after a three-song encore at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier.

She’d been coughing all night, had apologized for it, observed that many in the audience were coughing with colds, too, but had soldiered on.

“I’ve got no voice left, but I don’t care,” she said two songs near the end, after covering The Band’s Ophelia with her quintet. “I feel like singing.”

After the show, however, it was obvious she’d gone too far.

The announcement was made on Krall’s Twitter account at 11:30: Her next show, Wednesday night in Buffalo, N.Y. , “has been cancelled due to an upper respiratory infection.”

No word yet on whether the 48-year-old singer and pianist will be well enough for her Thursday show in Kingston, Ont. Already, last Saturday, Krall had been fighting a cold at her show in Ottawa.

A breathy, husky voice may be her trademark, but when you can’t breathe, it’s time to slow down, and that’s what Krall is doing, at least for a day.

So, Montreal, count your blessings. We got her just in time.

Despite being less than perfect, Krall delivered a fine show, and not only as a musician. Between songs, she traded on her folksy, self-deprecating charm in humorous asides to the audience.

She recounted her first gig as a 15-year-old, playing in the local roughneck hockey bar run by a retired NHL referee. She talked fondly of her family back then (especially her flapper great-aunt, Jean, who danced in New York City in the 1920s) and of her family now (two sons with singer Elvis Costello – “They like his music better than mine.”)

And – with musicians Stewart Duncan (fiddle, guitar), Patrick Warren (keyboards), Aram Bajakian (guitar), Karriem Riggins (drums) and Dennis Crouch (bass) – she played and sang her lungs out.

This was to be a night of “really old music,” Krall announced at the start of the show, music she’d first heard on her dad’s 78-rpm records (his gramophone was on stage with her, just as it was the last time she played the hall, at the Jazz Fest in 2011). She gave the show a theatrical touch, too: Behind the band, tall red satin curtains framed a silver screen that played vintage film clips (and some faux-vintage ones, too).

After a video introduction by American actor Steve Buscemi (Fargo, Boardwalk Empire) in bowler hat and tails doing a carnival barker schtick from a bygone age, Krall and her band launched into When the Curtain Comes Down, off her latest record, Glad Rag Doll, followed by another off the same, There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears, and another, Just Like a Butterfly That’s Caught in the Rain.

By the fourth old song, Gene Austin’s Everything’s Made for Love, Krall’s voice was getting shaky. Her solid playing on the concert grand piano made up for it, but when the band left her alone to solo on a century-old upright off to the side, Krall could hide her infirmity no longer. It was time to own up to what we knew already: She was not in top form.

After joking about her playing style (“Once a saloon piano player, always a saloon piano player”) and how she imagines a sad future for herself covering her husband’s ‘70s hits on a cruise ship (Pump it Up, with a Rhythm Ace”), Krall strained through Peel Me a Grape and Nat King Cole’s Frim Fram Sauce, before Glad Rag Doll sent her into a coughing fit.

“I thought I could sneak away a whole show without telling you that I’ve got a cold,” she said sheepishly. “I think you probably just figured it out. But that goes with travelling this time of year, and um, I apologize for that. I’m doing my best.” The audience, who’d paid over $100 a ticket to see her, broke into applause.

And they coughed, too. “You guys all have colds, too, right?” Krall observed. “‘Tis the season.”

From there, the program ranged from Neil Young to Fats Waller, Bob Dylan to Billie Holiday, Doc Pomus to Billy Hill, a couple more Nat King Cole tunes, some Betty James blues and, as a rocking encore, Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. The evening closed the way Krall usually likes it: with a bedtime song for her boys back home, Prairie Lullaby.

“Saddle up your pony, the sandman’s here, to guide you down the trail of dreams,” she sang, her voice at its end, coughing as she played.

“Tumble in bed, my tired, my little sleepyhead …”

And with an adieu and a crank of the gramophone, she left the audience with a final tune spinning up from the depths of yesteryear off an old shellac record: Please Remember Me.

Definitely, Diana. Now get some rest.

* * *

THE SET LIST FROM TUESDAY NIGHT:

When the Curtain Comes Down

There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears

Just Like a Butterfly That’s Caught in the Rain

Everything’s Made for Love

Let It Rain

Temptation

Peel Me a Grape

Frim Fram Sauce

Glad Rag Doll

A Man Needs a Maid / Heart of Gold

I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

Simple Twist of Fate

On the Sunny Side of the Street

Lonely Avenue

Just You, Just Me

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

I’m a Little Mixed Up

and a three-song encore:

Ophelia

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Prairie Lullaby

Posted by: Jeff Heinrich



Article: Concert Review: Diana Krall’s Glad Rag Doll tour wows NAC audience (www.ottawacitizen.com)

By Peter Robb, The Ottawa Citizen February 24, 2013











Canadian jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall performs at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Saturday, February 23.
Photograph by: James Park , James Park, Ottawa Citizen



NAC Presents Diana Krall
Southam Hall
Saturday Night, Feb. 23, 2013


OTTAWA — There was a certain amount of teeth-gnashing when Diana Krall released her latest CD, Glad Rag Doll, produced by the legendary T-Bone Burnett and featuring jazz standards from the 1920s and 1930s drawn from her father’s collection of 78 RPM albums. Not “jazzy” enough for some purists.

Well for the rest of us — me, and the nearly full house at the NAC Saturday night — it’s plenty jazzy, and funky, and bluesy and downright good enough. One shouldn’t really expect anything less from the queen of jazz piano, even when she’s battling a cold. The fact that she has chosen to express herself in the music of vaudeville made Krall’s Saturday night concert at the NAC well worth the very pricey price of admission.

That was most in evidence when Krall, through the force of her very open and quirky stage presence, created the intimate mood of a speakeasy, not unlike her very first gig as a 16-year-old piano player in a sports bar in Nanaimo, B.C. That’s not an easy feat to pull off in Southam Hall, which is where intimacy can go to die on occasion. However, she did it.

Many performers these days put on the Ritz and try to tell a story in their performances. Earlier this year, Loreena McKennitt used some well-placed props, including a row of candelabras, to enhance the meaning of certain songs. Krall embarked on her performance with a film intro featuring Steve Buscemi, the star of the hit TV series Boardwalk Empire, that blended into the overture that began the evening. The sense of performance continued through a string of film clips from the silent era in the main, that most of the time successfully complemented the songs being performed.

Krall’s music is always technically perfect, but sometimes she can be too calm, cool and collected.

Not Saturday night. In a show that lasted almost two hours, she was personal, talking a lot about her six-year-old boys, her great aunt who made it to New York in the 1920s as a singer and her own desire to skate on the Rideau Canal on Sunday, weather permitting. She said she bought some skates Saturday for just that purpose.

Talking aside, Krall delivered a night of great music, backed by a great five-man band, ranging from a lighthearted rendition of The Sunny Side of the Street to a powerful version of the torch song Lonely Avenue. She played her faves including Nat King Cole’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams and some Bob Dylan and Tom Waits.

The wistful title song Glad Rag Doll was beautifully rendered in a solo on a upright piano and dedicated to all the young women who made vaudeville their career in the Jazz Age. As she has been during her tour, she took requests from the audience.

Krall has explained her approach to performing in this tour. In a recent interview she said that “I know from the first few bars how the night will go. It’s like a dinner party. You know how sometimes you throw seven people at a table and they can’t find common ground and other times people sit down immediately and it’s like they’ve known each other for a million years? That’s how it feels when it’s good.

“All I do is I go onstage and feel out the vibe. After I suit up in my hockey gear, adjust my skates just so, and I watch the opening film from the side of the stage, and I watch the band’s accompaniment until it’s my time to go out and sit at the piano. I make sure my shoes are on the right feet and then away we go ... ”

Away we go indeed. The crowd was warm and receptive and gave her a richly deserved standing ovation at the end of the night. That prompted an encore that included a lyrical version of Prairie Lullaby.

The playlist from Saturday night:

WE JUST COULDN’T SAY GOODBYE

AIN’T NO SWEET MAN

JUST LIKE A BUTTERFLY

EVERYTHING’S MADE FOR LOVE

LET IT RAIN

TEMPTATION

PEEL ME A GRAPE

LET’S FACE THE MUSIC AND DANCE

GLAD RAG DOLL

SIT RIGHT DOWN AND WRITE MYSELF A LETTER

SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE

SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET

LONELY AVENUE

JUST YOU, JUST ME

BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS

A LITTLE MIXED UP

HEART OF SATURDAY NIGHT

SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES

PRAIRIE LULLABY

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Fuente: www.ottawacitizen.com