Diana Krall in little less than a decade successfully
won both fans from the jazz world as well as an adoring mainstream audience.
Each time too she gradually seemed to be moving away from the piano chair of
her jazz trio into a more refined sultry jazz singer. And where her earlier albums
always gathered strong and positive reviews, her less trio-focused works have
always been on the ‘politely’ or ‘approvingly’ positive side rather than enthusiastic
praise that her first few recordings received.
And so after the politely received and massively
selling ‘The Look Of Love’, and a very successful global tour, came Diana
Krall’s first live album; ‘A Night In Paris’, recorded over a series of five
nights at the prestigious Paris Olympia. Krall comes backed by a great band
consisting of guitarist Anthony Wilson, bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff
Hamilton, and only on some tracks is she backed by the superb Orchestre
Symphonique European. Happily the material is split nicely between the Nat Cole
Trio-inspired music that brought her first into the limelight and the later
smoother more orchestral work that has made her the favourite of the
dinner-party circuit.
Opening with the swinging ‘I Love Being Here With You,
from her second album, her superb piano is fully involved, much missed after an
almost complete absence from ‘The Look Of Love’. And even better, her singing
is more free and impassioned than has been recently witnessed. Of course, to
keep the larger fanbase happy, she then switches to the orchestral-backed
‘Let’s Fall In Love’. But very surprisingly, the orchestra doesn’t define the
piece; Krall’s piano and Wilson’s guitar lead the way, and they do so
flawlessly.
The flow of older, uptempo jazz followed by slower,
mellower tunes continues, with ‘Deed I Do’ taken from Krall’s excellent Nat
King Cole tribute album ‘All For You’. The quartet really come together and
plays fantastically, with the piano well to the fore and sounding brilliant. It
is disappointing then that it is immediately followed by her take on ‘The Look
Of Love’. Too slow, sounding just like the lumpen studio version, and lacking
really any dramatic feel to it, it tries to be a pop song in a jazz style with
a bossa nova flair and fails at all three. It does though have the benefit of
one of Krall’s beautifully played piano interludes.
‘East Of The Sun’ picks things back up again for the
trio setting, while ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ straight after suffers again
from too sedentary a tempo. Happily, the final half of the disc is the much better
half, with a relaxed bossa ‘S‘Wonderful’ and a superb swinging ‘Fly Me To The
Moon’ with some impeccable piano work and vocal phrasing from Krall.
An encore then comes in the form of an excellent Joni
Mitchell number ‘A Case Of You’, before needlessly being followed by an
unsubtlely tacked on studio track, no doubt for the benefit of the marketing
team at Verve. A cover of Billy Joel’s ‘Just The Way You Are’, a song even he
wasn’t happy with (hence his refusal to ever play it live), Krall’s version adds
nothing, lacks personality and seems to be here solely to provide a hit to
promote the album.
A live jazz album can be a truly awesome recording,
and if a gig of Krall’s earlier career with just a trio had been recorded, one
can only imagine how much more thrilling it would have been. Unfortunately here
the swinging fire of the small group is broken up by the slower ballads that
pulled in the larger audiences from albums ‘When I Look In Your Eyes’ and ‘The
Look Of Love’. Maybe better sequencing might have given a better result, but
what we get instead is a stop-start effect that is probably not going to
satisfy either the older Krall jazz fans or the newer audience she’s recently
attracted.
After ‘The Look Of Love’ many have unfairly made a
case against Diana Krall and her music and that she is simply now no longer a
jazz musician of any notable standing. Though there is sadly evidence to
support that here. There is also amongst the excellent quartet pieces plenty of
evidence that suggests just the opposite. ‘A Night In Paris’ is a good
recording of both Diana Kralls – early
jazz firebird, and later ballad songstress – but assembled in the way it is
here, and with an obvious grab for her new audience in the form of a
lack-lustre song performed blandly bolted on to the end, it all just feels
‘messy’. If you like the earlier grittier Krall, you’ll enjoy six of the
numbers here and you’ll have an excellent six-track live mini-album. If you
like the later candlelit bathroom-esque Krall, you’ll like six of the numbers
here and you’ll have almost identical versions of songs you’ll already have,
and one pop-jazz tune you won’t want to have. For the most part though, it just
feels like a missed opportunity. Disappointing.
**
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