Stepping Out (Remaster) Diana Krall

• 1 This Can't Be Love 04:30
• 2 Straighten Up and Fly Right 03:55
• 3 Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 04:02
• 4 I'm Just a Lucky So and So 04:21
• 5 Body and Soul 05:34
• 6 42nd Street 06:18
• 7 Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me 04:30
• 8 Big Foot 07:04
• 9 Frim Fram Sauce 04:06
• 10 Jimmie 05:25
• 11 As Long as I Live 04:42
• 12 On the Sunny Side of the Street 04:52
• 13 Summertime 05:09
• Total Runtime 01:04:28

Info zu Stepping Out (Remaster)

„Stepping Out“ was singer Diana Krall's first released session, recorded in 1992. Jazz singing aside, what most attracts listeners at first are Krall's prodigious piano chops. A former student of legendary pianist Jimmy Rowles, Krall is eager to show her stuff here, making this release as much an instrumentalist's debut as a vocalist's. Unlike just about every other new pianist, Krall doesn't go in for the murky chromatic maelstroms that currently pass for improvisation. She's an unpretentious traditionalist with a big funky sound and splashy dynamics worthy of Erroll Garner and Red Garland. Check out instrumentals "Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea" and "Big Foot" for thoroughly hard swinging of the old school.

Of course Diana Krall has since made a name as one of our better jazz singers. The simplicity and taste marking her piano playing also characterize Krall's approach to singing. And the bluesy spare attack she employs leaves plenty of room for the liquid piano accompaniment to fill up. She's also fond of bending a phrase or two, but doesn't overdo it like many neophyte jazz singers. Most of all she sounds honest, a rarity in a young artist performing in such a classic style.

Diana Krall, piano, vocals
John Clayton, acoustic bass
Jeff Hamilton, drums

Recorded at Kingsound, North Hollywood, California and Group IV Studios, Hollywood, California
Engineered by Hank Cicalo, Ian Terry, Rick Winquest
Mixed by Denis Cadieux, Ian Terry
Produced by Jim West

Digitally remastered

Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, 24-bit. The provided 96 kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value!

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!

Booklet für Stepping Out (Remaster)