The Girl In The Other Room Diana Krall

• 1 Stop This World 03:59
• 2 The Girl In The Other Room 04:06
• 3 Temptation 04:29
• 4 Almost Blue 04:06
• 5 I've Changed My Address 04:48
• 6 Love Me Like A Man 05:53
• 7 I'm Pulling Through 04:04
• 8 Black Crow 04:57
• 9 Narrow Daylight 03:33
• 10 Abandoned Masquerade 05:13
• 11 I'm Coming Through 05:10
• 12 Departure Bay 05:41
• Total Runtime 55:59

Info for The Girl In The Other Room

The depth of feeling which lies behind the beautiful façade of Diana Krall's highly successful Verve releases has always been known to her most appreciative listeners. However, with her album, The Girl In The Other Room, Krall not only illustrates her understanding of the breadth of possibilities in the jazz idiom but also reveals her talent as a songwriter.

Indeed, the title song of the record is a Krall original. While some may be attracted to the lyrical portrait of a mysterious woman distracted by love (and note in passing that the words were co-written with Elvis Costello), the ear is drawn to the elegant and effortlessly swinging accompaniment of Krall's piano and that of her long-time partners in rhythm: Jeff Hamilton on drums and bassist, John Clayton.

For much of the album, the musical support comes from drummer Peter Erskine and bassist Christian McBride. The inventive and sympathetic guitar playing of Anthony Wilson is heard throughout a record that which also features drummer Terri Lynne Carrington and Neil Larson sitting in on Hammond B-3 for one cut.

The album is the first co-produced by Krall and her long-time producer Tommy LiPuma. Recorded at Capitol Studios, Hollywood and Avatar Recording, New York City, the sessions were engineered throughout 2003 by another long-term cohort, Al Schmitt.

Listeners used to Krall's intimate and seductive interpretations of standard ballads may be surprised at first by her present choice of composers. Take a listen to her take on Mose Allison's timely blues, 'Stop This World' or the driving and joyfully carnal 'Love Me Like a Man' (with its final chorus salute to Count Basie) and you will hear a singer, bandleader and piano player in her top form.

Krall's sensual approach to Tom Waits' 'Temptation,' with its extraordinary introduction by Christian McBride, is balanced by Krall's own exquisite preface to a most tender rendition of Elvis Costello's 'Almost Blue.' A beautifully reflective version of a relatively obscure standard, 'I'm Pulling Through,' recalls the style of her teacher, Jimmy Rowles.

The spirit of Rowles and an apprenticeship of the jazz club experiences is inspiration for one of Krall’s new compositions, 'I've Changed My Address,' only as Krall reflects, revisiting some of these venues can be a shock: 'Everything looks pretty much the same but the place is now a sports bar and there is pool table where there used to be a piano.'

While so much of the music is new, the album itself recalls a vinyl disc of two sides. The bold and flowing solos from Krall and guitarist Anthony Wilson on Joni Mitchell's song of travel, 'Black Crow,' announce a series of original songs that speak of family and of love, but also of enduring the grievous loss of a parent. As Krall explained recently: 'I went through a series of deep personal losses and changes. So...this is what I did instead of shutting the door and saying ‘I can't deal with it’'.

So it is that the gospel changes of the hopeful 'Narrow Daylight' give away to the sophisticated blues of 'Abandoned Masquerade.' It is this song that most clearly expresses the need (for now at least) for the singer to step out from behind the beautiful romantic illusions found in so many songs of the past. Once again, the music leaves the listener in no doubt that they are hearing the work of a jazz composer.

The gently defiant tone of 'I'm Coming Through' marks another subtle shift of musical scene with wonderful playing from Anthony Wilson. The content of these last songs is undoubtedly the most specifically personal material yet recorded by Diana Krall.

The album closes with perhaps the most deeply felt of the self-composed titles. 'Departure Bay' contains vivid and touching images of her hometown of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island but also a wrenching description of her family's first Christmas without her mother and a final verse that welcomes new love and hope for the future.

Musically composed by Krall alone, these songs mark a lyrical collaboration with her new husband, Elvis Costello. Explaining how they worked, Krall said: 'I wrote the music and then Elvis and I talked about what we wanted to say. I told him stories and wrote pages and pages of reminiscences, descriptions and images, and he put them into tighter lyrical form. For 'Departure Bay,' I wrote down a list of things that I love about home, things I realized were different, even exotic, now that I've been away'.

Songs often suggest and recall moments in our own lives and listeners must surely be aware that Diana Krall's previous recordings contained many personal but private meanings for the artist. On The Girl In The Other Room, what was once partly hidden has been brought beautifully into view.

'The thing about Diana is her musicianship,' Al Schmitt said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. 'More than most singers, she knows what's right for her, and she knows how to make it happen musically.'


Produced by Tommy LiPuma and Diana Krall. Recorded by Al Schmitt at Capitol Studios, Hollywood and Avatar Studios, New York. Mixed by Al Schmitt at Capitol Studios, Hollywood. Mastered by Doug Sax and Robert Hadley at The Mastering Lab, Los Angeles.

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!

This album contains no booklet.