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Quiet Krall

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Parent Issue
Day
25
Month
June
Year
2009
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Copyright Protected
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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MUSIC

Quiet Krall

Singer-pianist, coming to Summer Festival, reveals intimate side on her recent tunes

BY JENN MCKEE

Grammy-winning jazz pianist and vocalist Diana Krall - performing on Friday at Hill Auditorium as part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival - has come a long way from her hometown of Nanaimo, British Columbia, where she once played piano in an NHL-themed restaurant owned by a former hockey referee.

Even so, Krall has maintained her roots. She and her husband, singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, now make their home in Vancouver, raising 2-year-old twins Dexter and Frank.

Krall’s choice to have children came in part at the nudging of Elton John, whose London estate provided the location for the two musicians’ 2003 wedding ceremony.

“He says, ‘Diana, you’re 39 - you’re going to be 40. You better start thinking about having kids,”’ Krall said earlier this year in an Associated Press interview.

While the little ones would probably be enough to keep Krall busy, she’s now on the road promoting her new, bossa nova-influenced album, “Quiet Nights.” (She reportedly planned on taking the boys with her on tour.)

“I’m just doing better work because I’m more relaxed - you don’t have too much time to obsess or worry,” Krall said in the AP interview.

Krall first earned fame in the 1990s by giving a new, sultry voice to standards popularized by artists like Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole, but she’s also ventured into songwriting. Her 2004 album “The Girl in the Other Room” featured six songs that she co-wrote with Costello.

Her newest album was inspired by Krall’s trip to Brazil, and it has an intimate, romantic feel; Krall considers it a love letter to her husband.

“I feel this album’s very womanly,”
Krall stated on her Web site, “like you’re lying next to your lover in bed whispering this in their ear.”

Jenn McKee can be reached at 734-994-6841 orjmckee@annarbornews.com.

PREVIEW

Diana Krall

What: Grammy-winning jazz vocalist and pianist.

Where: Hill Auditorium, 825 N. University Ave.

When: Friday at 8 p.m.

How much: $45-$75.

Info: 734-764-2538 or www. annarborsummerfestival.org.