John Krull
By John Krull
Guest columnist
When jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall and her small band—a bassist and a drummer—walk onto the stage, they do so without fanfare.
They stroll out, dressed mostly in black, a curious choice for a steamy summer night, nod to the crowd at the Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park and begin to play.
The first song, “I Love Being Here With You,” sets the tone. It’s delivered as an invitation, a soft coaxing for the audience to settle in for something more intimate than a typical performance.
Instead of seeing someone entertain us as the sun drops on this sultry evening, we’ll experience something else, a chance to hear familiar songs reinterpreted in ways that make them seem as close to us as our own memories.
That is Krall’s art. She makes even the oldest and most often covered songs feel lived in, as much a part of her and her listeners as the beats of their own hearts.
I’ve been a Diana Krall fan for 30 years.
I first started listening to her because the similarities of our last names intrigued me. Krall, Kroll and Krull all spring from the same source, but that doesn’t mean that we have ancestors in common.
Once upon a time, the name just meant the person bearing it possessed curly hair—a promise Krall has kept much better than I have.
The more I listened to her, the more I came to appreciate her gift. She does not possess a big, booming voice, a vocal instrument with the power to impress and even overwhelm an audience.
No, she is a contralto of limited range.
But what could be a deficit she has turned into an advantage. Instead of trying to drive her listeners back into their seats with the force of her voice, she beckons them to come closer, to settle in and share a moment, a feeling, a lingering source of hurt or a private longing.
She sings as if she’s having a conversation or telling a story.
I listen to her often when I write. She reminds me that a column or a story or a documentary script is just another kind of chat between people.
The album of hers I listen to the most is “Quiet Nights,” particularly her intensely moving interpretation of the title track. Without ever having met me, Krall somehow gave perfect voice with that tune to the way I feel about my wife and the family we have built together.
On this muggy night, she does not disappoint.
Most concerts grow bigger as they proceed, building toward a crescendo or even a series of peaks.
Krall takes another route. As the evening deepens, rather than expanding the spectacle, she draws the circle closer, encouraging the audience to settle in for a quiet night together.
She doesn’t banter much.
When she does, it is to encourage a sense of closeness. She pays tribute throughout to the players accompanying her.
At one point, when people in the audience shout out requests, she says, “those are good songs”—and then goes about playing the ones she wants to play.
At another point, when she sings “Peel Me a Grape,” one of the most suggestive tunes she ever recorded, she says that some of the song’s words don’t speak to her the way they once did, so she’s only going to sing the ones that do.
The show’s highlight is her reading of Bob Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate.” Dylan and most other covers of the tune deliver it as an elegy, a mournful recounting of a lost relationship.
Krall does that, and more. Her take captures the kinship between longing and loneliness, making me think of all the times my life swung on a hinge, dependent on … a simple twist of fate.
This is the power of great artists. They always find ways to drive us inward.
When Krall and her small band return to the stage for an encore, they play an aching version of the recently departed Brian Wilson’s “In My Room.”
Their reading takes us to those places where we can confront and comfort our most private selves, acknowledging both the good and bad we’ve seen and done along the way.
When the song ends, she delivers a gentle but heartfelt tribute to Wilson.
Then Diana Krall leaves the stage.
And the quiet night rolls on.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Send comments to editorial@therepublic.com.
