Quiet Nights Diana Krall

• 1 Where Or When 04:07
• 2 Too Marvelous For Words 04:04
• 3 I've Grown Accustomed To His Face 04:46
• 4 The Boy From Ipanema 04:53
• 5 Walk On By 05:01
• 6 You're My Thrill 05:46
• 7 Este Seu Olhar 02:43
• 8 So Nice 03:50
• 9 Quiet Nights 04:45
• 10 Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry 04:49
• 11 How Can You Mend A Broken Heart 04:28
• 12 Everytime We Say Goodbye 05:19
• Total Runtime 54:31

Info zu Quiet Nights

It was only a matter of time before Diana Krall turned her attention to bossa nova, but the result, now that it’s here, makes you wish she had got there a little sooner. Surrounding herself with a crack quartet – Anthony Wilson on guitar, John Clayton on bass, and percussionists John Clayton and Paulinho Da Costa – backed by a Claus Ogerman-led orchestra, Krall turns Quiet Nights into a “love letter for my husband” aka Elvis Costello, with a meticulously manicured production co-authored by Krall herself and Tommy LiPuma.

She owes a double debt to Ogerman, whose strings-saturated arrangements ooze with a seriously sensuous, impeccably crafted sophistication. Mixing bossa nova classics with jazz standards, Krall lowers her voice to virtually sub-sonic levels to deliver husky, half-whispered but deliciously sultry performances so packed with sentimental billet doux that half way through it all threatens to congeal into one intrusive, gelatinous mass. This is dreamy, gently swaying, cocktail bar music making given the glossiest of productions. As such, it works best when listened to with half an ear (and probably at 4am in the morning). It’s then Krall’s sotto voce approach comes into its own; I’ve Grown Accustomed to His Face, So Nice, Too Marvellous for Words and You’re My Thrill all becoming enviously intimate confessionals.

Krall even turns The Boy From Ipanema into a torch song that pads and prowls with deliberately underplayed intent while the title track is all brooding desire and wish fulfilment. But when the approach goes wrong, it borders on turning the Bacharach/David classic Walk On By into a curiously anaemic apology. Limited edition discs also carry two bonus tracks: a surprisingly effective cover of the Bee Gees’ How Can You Mend A Broken Heart and a pared back, paced down version of Cole Porter’s Every Time We Say Goodbye.

It’s not what you might expect of Krall or, for that matter, bossa nova, and nor is it jazz, but in its own deliberately dissipated dreaminess it has an obvious understated allure all of its own. (Michael Quinn, BBC Music)

Diana Krall, Voice and Piano
Anthony Wilson, Guitar
John Clayton, Bass
Jeff Hamilton, Drums
Paulinho Da Costa, Percussion

Some music is intended to paint a romantic scene – a candlelit dinner, a walk along a moonlit beach. Quiet Nights – Diana Krall’s twelfth album – ain’t about that. Using Brazil as a musical point of reference, the award-winning pianist and singer is not suggesting a night out; she means to stay in.

“It's not coy. It's not ‘peel me a grape,’ little girl stuff. I feel this album’s very womanly – like you're lying next to your lover in bed whispering this in their ear.”

She’s not kidding. From Krall’s refreshing version of “Where or When,” to an utterly soul-stilling rendition of “You’re My Thrill,” the ten songs on Quiet Nights are disarming in their intimacy. Even those already familiar with the breathy vocals and rhythmic lilt in Krall’s music – and now there are millions – will be taken aback by just how far the music pushes, unabashedly, into the realm of sweet surrender. “It’s a sensual, downright erotic record and it's intended to be that way.”

Krall is the first to credit the musical team she assembled – her loyal quartet, ace producer Tommy LiPuma, engineer Al Schmitt plus legendary arranger Claus Ogerman – for much of the seductive power on Quiet Nights. But there’s a deeper, palpable sense of maturity that she brought to the recording as well. “Most of my singing and playing on the album is really just first or second takes. ‘You're My Thrill,’ was a second take – “Too Marvelous,” first take.”

“She’s completely matured,” says Tommy LiPuma, who should know, having first worked with Krall in 1994. “Even in the past few years. She approaches her vocal phrasing much more like an instrumentalist than a straight singer. It’s in her reading of the lyrics, and the timbre of her voice, much more misty like Peggy Lee in her mature period.” (“I didn't want to over sing -- I was drawing also from Julie London very strongly on this album,” Krall confesses, noting that such influences are not always conscious on her part. “It just came out that way.”)

As such, the Brazilian focus of Krall’s new album could not have been a more natural next step. “She's been very sympathetic to this music for a long time,” notes LiPuma. “When we did The Look of Love, we were very much leaning in the bossa nova direction. Quiet Nights is really a celebration of this music. Diana sings three Brazilian classics, she rhythmically turned four standards into that style, and three ballads. So really there are ten songs on the album of which seven are just straight up bossa novas.”

It makes sense that Quiet Nights (also the English name of the bossa nova classic “Corcovado” that is the title track) draws much of its musical spirit from the land that puts the “carnal” into its annual Carnaval celebration. “I was inspired to do this record because of my trip last year to Brazil,” says Krall, who returned to Rio de Janeiro to shoot a concert for a new DVD release. “Then I just kept going back and found that everywhere you go you still hear the sounds of Jobim and bossa nova.”

For those who may not remember or weren’t yet around, Brazil’s bossa nova wave (literally “new bump” or “new way” in Portuguese) was the widely popular musical style, based on the country’s traditional samba rhythms, that swept up from the sidewalk cafes of Rio in the early ‘60s and seduced the entire planet with its hypnotic, swaying beats, sultry melodies, and new, exciting harmonies – all with generous room for jazz improvisation. Antonio Carlos Jobim (who composed “Quiet Nights” and “The Girl from Ipanema”) and Joao Gilberto (“Este Seu Olhar”) are two of the pioneers of the music, revered as national heroes in Brazil to this day.

Fifteen years later, she can look back over a stellar career path: in ’99, signed to Verve, her career exploded when When I Look in Your Eyes won a GRAMMY® for best jazz vocal and became the first jazz disc to be nominated for Album of the Year in twenty-five years. In 2002, The Look of Love was a #1 bestseller in the US and a five-time platinum album in Canada. 2004’s The Girl in the Other Room, was her first to focus on her own songwriting (with six tunes co-written with husband Elvis Costello); 2005’s Christmas Songs proved one of the season’s best-sellers; and 2006’s From This Moment On was an upbeat, critical success that coincided with the birth of her twin sons – a life-affirming event that LiPuma feels enhanced Krall’s continuing growth as a musician. “Motherhood definitely agrees with her—and marriage. I think she's really come into her own.”

As moving as Quiet Nights is -- deriving from Krall’s feelings for Brazil and bossa novas – the singer is not shy in admitting that its sensuality is as much about her home life. “It’s my love letter to my husband – just an intimate, romantic album.” As they say in Rio – obrigado!

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet