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
