Diane Schuur: celebrating anniversary of Monterey triumph

As a youth, jazz singer Diane Schuur spent more than a decade performing in relative obscurity.

Then came her legendary performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1979. There, as a surprise guest, she delivered a knockout appearance that still echoes through the music world.

Back then, singers of the Great American Songbook were threatened with extinction by the popularity of rock music and instrumental electric-fusion jazz. But on that evening in Monterey, saxophonist Stan Getz heard Schuur perform and perhaps sensed that something special had occurred. He went on to become her most important mentor. She was 25 years old.

Today, the career arcs of superstars such as Diana Krall and Harry Connick Jr. plus the renewed interest in great songs of the past may all owe something to the Big Bang created that night by Schuur.

Since then, she has won two Grammy Awards, performed with Maynard Ferguson, Stan Getz and B.B. King and has sung in Carnegie Hall and the White House.

Schuur will open Tuesday at Jazz Alley as a part of a 25th anniversary celebration of her Monterey triumph.

She is also touring in support of her latest recording, "Midnight." Every song was written especially for this project by pop star Barry Manilow, who produced it too. There are also cameo vocal appearances by Manilow, Karrin Allyson and Brian McKnight.

Before anyone runs out to alert the jazz police, it should be mentioned that the CD features some of the best jazz players in the world: Alan Broadbent on piano, Chuck Berghofer on bass and drummers Harvey Mason and Peter Erskine.

At Jazz Alley, Schuur plans on performing tunes from the new CD but will also sing many of the popular hits from her past recordings too. She will be playing piano herself and will be accompanied by Scott Steed on bass, Patrick Lamb on sax and Jim Zimmerman on drums.

Even though she is blessed with abundant vocal talent and a loyal fan base, life hasn't entirely been a bed of roses for Schuur.

Blind since infancy, her career began at age 9 with her first professional jobs, including those at a local Holiday Inn. I first heard her when, at age 12, she sat in on one of my piano-trio gigs in Tacoma. She had a very high, powerful soul-singer voice and sounded like a very young Stevie Wonder. It was a stunning experience that many other musicians and I still remember vividly to this day.

A few years later, still in the early phase of her adult career, she became known for her feisty, combative personality and hard-partying ways.

When I called her at her condo in California, I expected to be greeted with the flamboyant Schuur personality from the past and was prepared for the interview to be a somewhat raucous experience. Perhaps a cross between interviewing Bette Midler and Mr. T.

As it turned out, Schuur was very serene, content and reflective about her life. She is now happily married to a nonmusician, has her Seattle-area home up for sale and is planning a move into a new house in Orange County. "I love the Northwest," Schuur said, "but right now, I feel that I have to be a snowbird."

Speaking in a very clear, almost musical voice, Schuur was charmingly direct when discussing the occasional excesses in her life and her current sobriety and clean living.

Q: Did your life and view of the world suddenly change after you became well known so fast?

A: Hearing 10,000 people cheer and clap at Monterey was an amazing experience. But, ultimately, it wasn't any one moment but a culmination of lots of moments that changed my life. My Carnegie Hall concert, working with Stan Getz and B.B. King, the Grammy Awards and a White House appearance were a few of those.

Q: You did some pretty wild living early in your career. Are there things you wish you hadn't done?

A: You know, I don't have any regrets about anything I've done. I'm cool with it. That's one thing that helps me in my sobriety and clean living, the fact that I don't have to regret anything. I think I was seeking a spiritual quest during those times, and I came out the other side as a more evolved person. We all go through things, especially in the music business, and it all goes into a funnel and runs out the other end and makes us what we are.

Q: You sound much softer on your new CD. Are you singing differently now?

A: I think that life's experiences can change the voice in the way it emotes. There's a gentle quality in this new recording that's a contrast to the more strident thing I did on the Count Basie CD. Some critics didn't react positively when I used a more projected feeling, although Aretha Franklin and Ethel Merman used it a lot too. But I'm grateful that I can be strident if I want or soften it up at a moment's notice.

Q: Speaking of emoting, the song "Life is Good" is the only piece on your CD that has you playing piano. It's an incredibly touching performance — one doesn't know whether to feel happy or wistfully sad. When you accompany yourself, do you do anything different than when you're a standup singer?

A: Yes, the piano and I become one voice. There is more of a full-body interaction with the music. Concerning the feeling you mentioned, the song itself is about people who have had problems and came out OK on the other side. What I try to do is encourage people to have only "quality problems" (she laughs). In other words, "life is good" if you live the solution, not the problem.

Q: Barry Manilow produced your new CD. Did he do more than just get coffee for you?

A: Oh yes! For one thing, he wrote the songs. Then he would keep having me try different things out until we got an approach that worked. He was a very active, hands-on producer because he's a singer too. But he always did things in a way that made you feel good.