Diana Krall: the undisputed master now
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Diana Krall has turned the corner.
Her thrilling, near-perfect show Saturday at the Paramount Theatre — the first of two sold-out concerts, and the kickoff to her 40-city "Look of Love" tour — proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the 37-year-old Canadian chanteuse has left her apprentice years behind and entered a masterful midcareer.
Relaxed, funny and more comfortable in her own skin than she ever has appeared before, the singer/pianist delivered an alternately snappy and sultry jazz set with her new quartet.
Intimately lighted as if she were in a club, with a backdrop sumptuously bathed in velvety red light, Krall offered a satisfying mix of her trademark torchy vocals and jazz interplay, with plenty of soloing.
Though she is a knockout, blue-eyed blonde with a pouty mouth and a cracked, come-hither whisper, Krall always has given the impression that she'd rather hike over to the piano than waste time being a sexpot.
Saturday night was different. Dressed in a handsome black pants suit with revealing cleavage, she walked forthrightly into the spotlight, dazzled the crowd with a big, full smile, then sat down and belted out her standard opener, "I Love Being Here With You," as if she really meant it.
It was the beginning of a stunning hour-and-a-half.
Like all great popular singers, Krall is a storyteller who gets inside a song. Her rendering of the vengeful hurt of "Cry Me A River," from her million-selling current album, "The Look of Love" (Verve), was like a bedtime story: You knew how it was going to come out, but you still hung on every word.
"That was helpful," she said, sighing with a secret smile, as though she had someone in mind.
Recalling that she first heard "I've Got You Under My Skin" when she was 15 on "Sinatra at the Sands," she played it slow and steamy, with loose and relaxed phrasing and dramatic shifts of timbre.
An accomplished pianist as well as a deft self-accompanist, Krall smiled empathetically over her shoulder during ensemble passages at her quartet: Anthony Wilson, guitar; Jeff Hamilton, drums; and Pierre Boussaguet, bass.
Her swimmingly rubato version of Joni Mitchell's longing ballad, "A Case of You," performed alone at the piano, was pin-drop gorgeous.
Krall needs to tweak a couple of tunes. She took Bob Dorough's "Devil May Care" much too fast, swallowing the lyrics, and Jerome Kern's trifle, "Pick Yourself Up" sounded more like a self-esteem theme for preschoolers than a love song.
This was a jazz gig, so Krall sang only two songs from her current, lush disc with strings, including, for an encore (there were two, and two standing ovations), the album's subversively seductive bossa-nova arrangement of "S'Wonderful."
But the best thing about this show? Krall will be doing this for many, many years to come.
Paul de Barros: 206-464-3247.
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