Diana Krall: The shy goddess

Diana Krall: Audience with a cool lady

The door to the suite is still closed. We stand in the corridor in front of it and wait. We, that's the journalists, and behind them: Diana Krall, one of the most successful jazz musicians of all time. She should give us short audiences. But it takes time. The colleague does not come out. You do not hear anything for a long time. And then they start making music in there. Guitar, voice, an undamped piano, no strings. It sounds clear and decisive, it is ... disturbingly beautiful. We are just around the corner, "Let It Rain" is filling the hall of the Berlin Hotel "Adlon", and everyone is getting very quiet. Then the door flies open, the colleague greets him, and Diana Krall shouts, "Hi, come in, sit down, we'll hear another song for the man who's just had a baby." She points to the couch and boots in black biker boots and noble punk pants to the music system and turns on. She pulled her head between her shoulders as if she wanted to duck. It is said that she does not like interviewing, "too shy". Then she lolls into the sofa, a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes. It's an old lullaby, and the man from the drawer closes his eyes and smiles, blissfully. When he has gone to the star after a hug, the Krall takes off his glasses and wipes her eyes. "Sorry," she says in a harsh voice, "but I'm just so emotional." Tears are streaming down her cheeks. And I think: That can not be, that's not Diana Krall!

The Diana Krall you know, that's a cool lady. She brought jazz from back cellars to the pop charts in the 90s and has conquered a huge fanbase with evergreens like "Besame Mucho" or "S Wonderful". She plays immaculate piano. She has a lithe voice. On photos she looks cool, sexy and elegant. Her music is billowing in elevators, she is something of the jazz load of jazz and almost everybody's darling: perfect, professional - yawning.

And now that: a really sympathetic woman! The tired in the sofa hangs and sniffs and losplappert: It just just too much everything, 16 hours of interviews, yesterday Paris, today Berlin, in the morning a photo shoot in the cold, on the eve pike with asparagus in this German inn, in which they always would go in Berlin, because her ancestors had been Helmuts and Otto from West Prussia and emigrated in the 20s, to Canada. Then she told a journalist about her deceased mother, and she just had to think about her two boys because they missed her. "Do you want to see them?" Says Krall, pulling an iPad out of his pocket and wiping across the children's album: dark-haired twins with knobby noses, one in a lotus position on a mountain path. They are with her sister in Vancouver, now the ten days, then she would come home for a week and then the six weeks on tour in the US. You can tell that this time is just like a big black hole. "Well," stutters the overrolled journalist, "after all, you have one more week left." Then there is a long pause, and Diana Krall looks straight ahead, as she will do even more often when talking stupid things or asking funny technical questions.

A really sympathetic woman! The tired in the sofa hangs and sniffs and losplappert

Such as: Why do not you actually write your own songs? Why do you always interpret the classics as good as good? Or: At the beginning of your career, many male critics found a "beautiful, white, well-guarded woman in jazz amazing - how did you find that?". Pause. Look. And then she says "Bullshit!" and her jaw bulges out like a cowboy's, and she could now beat up their boots too. Would not we like to take a look at the pictures she made for the new album "Glad Rag Doll"? This time, she does not wear normal fashion, but her friend Colleen Atwood have been inspired by the look of the 20s. The music is also from the twenties. The costume designer Atwood was nine times nominated for the Oscar, for "Chicago" and "Alice in Wonderland" she got him. Krall wipes over the photos on the iPad, you see: a lascivious woman with a cool look and suspenders. And think: Do you enjoy this transformational game, or do you present yourself so sexy because that sells best?

Somehow, that does not work together. There: the ice princess, here: the easy-going, warm-hearted woman on the sofa. Real people are often different than their published image. But with Diana Krall it is almost annoying. She has so much talent, she masters her craft, she knows the best musicians. Why is not she showing in her music? Why is she hiding behind professional shallowness?

Elvis Costello wrote in his room the lyrics that could have come from her - and she in the other the music.

Diana Krall grew up in Nanaimo, a city on Vancouver Island. Her father was an accountant and collected records, her mother was a teacher and sang in the Lutheran choir. The brave daughter played piano with four and jazz as a teenager and went to the famous Berklee College of Music in Boston. There she found mentors and musician friends and moved for some years through the bars of the world: at the piano, as a bar pianist. In the mid-nineties she shot the charts and became famous with jazz - not soul or pop. Their game called the "New York Times" as "Jazz Latte": A thick layer of foam protect him from rejection. Means: I give what pleases - beautiful, skilful, harmless.

And then Diana Krall fell in love with a funny guy, Elvis Costello. This is a musician who has been moving like a weasel between styles since the seventies: punk, country, blokes, rock. He does not have as much ability as Diana Krall. But chutzpah and visibly fun. His courageous dilettantism is in stark contrast to her talented perfectionism. And yet, the two got together, got married, became parents of twins, and made an album together eight years ago. What was it like working together as a couple? "Elvis helped me in my hard time," says Diana Krall. That was when, shortly after, her mother died of blood cancer at age 60, her musical mentor and maternal musician friend. "He helped me to express my losses and feelings through music." Elvis Costello wrote in his room the lyrics that could have come from her - and she in the other the music. That's how "The Girl In The Other Room" was born. A special album. Because it was own. And deep. And good. Not so on sale. Then came again pleasing music, classic bossa nova and a "Christmas" album.

Only through the courage to willfulness becomes something great

Why is the woman who could be different hiding in this other room? She once said: Why write new songs, if there are such wonderful old ones? But she has told her colleague Barbra Streisand that she thinks of songs like an actress in roles. So she then makes music on stage. And it seems as if she dresses up in this image of cool beauty. Many actors say they are shy people - and one wonders why they then come into the limelight. Although they are shy. Or just because they are? As Diana Krall now sits, talks and sniffs, one must think it the other way around: A person who is so open, the public must shy and hide behind roles and songs. Otherwise he would be too vulnerable. In order to show something of this sensitivity and to create something original, it then needs hardship, maturity and the right partner.

"For the new album, I hired my husband as a ukulele player," says Diana Krall, laughing, "he's not a real ukulele player, he's not perfect." But it was great fun. Incidentally, the man trades here under the alias Howard Coward. Coward, the coward. Playing together with the expert Krall, a great guitarist and a creative producer. Presumably, that's what distinguishes art from perfection: courage. Because only through the courage to willfulness becomes something great.

Diana Krall turns on the music again - "Let It Rain" -, opens the door to the corridor, and the rain falls deep and heavy on the marble tiled corridor, full of warmth - and beautiful to cry.

(Diana Krall, "Glad Rag Doll", Universal)