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
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
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